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How do you factor competition into item choice?

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Luthias Austrene
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2015-02-18 12:13:59 UTC
This is mostly going to be personal preference, but I'm curious as to what other people think/do. Does anyone use a formula to estimate profits for an item with competition included? Or, like me, do most of you base it on how you feel about the number of active traders on that item?

Depending on the item, my maximum is 5-10 people trading in the last 24 hours, which leaves me with a decent number of orders on top whenever I update.
Bad Bobby
Bring Me Sunshine
In Tea We Trust
#2 - 2015-02-18 13:57:09 UTC
Count the corpses to assess competition. Check their pockets to calculate profit.
Alexi Stokov
State War Academy
Caldari State
#3 - 2015-02-18 15:29:26 UTC
Luthias Austrene wrote:
This is mostly going to be personal preference, but I'm curious as to what other people think/do. Does anyone use a formula to estimate profits for an item with competition included? Or, like me, do most of you base it on how you feel about the number of active traders on that item?

Depending on the item, my maximum is 5-10 people trading in the last 24 hours, which leaves me with a decent number of orders on top whenever I update.



How do you figure out its 5-10 (or any number) of traders?
Bad Bobby
Bring Me Sunshine
In Tea We Trust
#4 - 2015-02-18 16:56:08 UTC
Alexi Stokov wrote:
How do you figure out its 5-10 (or any number) of traders?

I think it can be a guess at best, based on the number of actively updated orders and the number of distinct behavior patterns you can observe in competition with you. But I've never been one for trying to glean much of that purely from the market screen, so I just put up some test orders and see what happens.

I'm sure some people can tell what colour socks I'm wearing just by looking at the Jita market with one eye closed and one hand dipped in goat's intestines. But I'm not really in to that.
TheSmokingHertog
Julia's Interstellar Trade Emperium
#5 - 2015-02-18 19:05:01 UTC  |  Edited by: TheSmokingHertog
Bad Bobby wrote:
Alexi Stokov wrote:
How do you figure out its 5-10 (or any number) of traders?

I think it can be a guess at best, based on the number of actively updated orders and the number of distinct behavior patterns you can observe in competition with you. But I've never been one for trying to glean much of that purely from the market screen, so I just put up some test orders and see what happens.

I'm sure some people can tell what colour socks I'm wearing just by looking at the Jita market with one eye closed and one hand dipped in goat's intestines. But I'm not really in to that.



Green / White, definitely.

The easiest way to track competition is to label people who mess with your orders in people in places, make 4 labels; label people who mess with the market daily, weekly, monthly, only sometimes.

This way you can find direct competition, station traders, speculators, hoarders, etc. When you have this overview, you can adjust your market trading accordingly.

"Dogma is kind of like quantum physics, observing the dogma state will change it." ~ CCP Prism X

"Schrödinger's Missile. I dig it." ~ Makari Aeron

-= "Brain in a Box on Singularity" - April 2015 =-
Zappity
New Eden Tank Testing Services
#6 - 2015-02-22 08:33:22 UTC
It depends what you are trading. For modules I generally calculate (well, have my spreadsheet calculate) volume in millions of ISK per day. This gives a reasonable indication of competition.

Zappity's Adventures for a taste of lowsec and nullsec.