Market Discussions

I did a little bit of googling, but the related keywords just kept giving me general market guides, and not the answer to what I was hoping to discover.

In short, sometimes I set up buy orders for various items (like a few ships + fits). Some of those items get sold to me, but some of those buy orders don't get filled...for weeks. Since I want to just finish the order and ship it to my staging system, I am not sure what I should do.

Should I just raise my buy order to the sell order prices? that would let me buy them immediately, but I am not sure if there is anything more involved like taxes/broker fees. There is the broker fee with making a buy order (but that's already a sunk cost), but there is still a broker fee when I raise the order.

Or should I just cancel the buy order, and then just buy from the lowest sell order? no taxes involved on my part as a buyer, correct?

So, it seems to me that since the initial broker fee is spent (i.e. sunk cost), raising my buy order just incurs additional broker's fees. It seems to me that just cancelling the buy order and buying from the sell order would be the best choice.

Is there anything I'm missing, or is that the best solution?

Thanks

yes, a couple times a day on my market alt, but regardless, some items don't get sold to buy orders so often (like t2 production components or faction items).

So, when i have had enough of waiting i want to know what is the best (i.e. cheapest) choice to just get the item now instead of continuously babying the buy order and hoping someone sells me 1 whenever

You only ask if it is "cheaper" to cancel your buy order and buy directly from sell order.

If you want the item immediately because you just happen to be in the station, then yes cancelling the buy order and buying directly from a sell order is the cheapest solution, because no fees are involved.

If you have some patience to wait, but you are worried that raising your buy order to closer to the sell order level will in effect make your item more expensive to buy in the end, then no, it will *normally* not be more expensive if you gradually increase your buy price. It will *only* get more expensive if you end up raising your buy order to so close to the level of the sell orders that the margin is smaller than your broker fee level (which is around 1% or smaller).

My general attitude is that I buy from sell orders if my desire for an item is even remotely time-critical, and wait on buy orders otherwise.

I've spent well over twenty billion ISK buying certain items from sell orders in the last week because I've seen time-limited opportunities to profit from those purchases.