Market Discussions

I can make a great amount like that too, but I think you'd be hard pressed to keep that percentage up with a 20bil investment. You'll run out of the good stuff to buy/sell!

(sniped)

@Lord Wickham
As far as memory serves all the scams you mention fall into the period Oct. 2010-Sept. 2011. My data currently only covers the 12 months previous to this. However, once I have tried to develop a rule set that works with the 2009-2010 data I will then go on to compile the data for the most recent 12 months as this should provide a good test of these rules and should expose any weaknesses that might arise from potentially designing a set specifically with only one year's data in mind.

@Zagam
Thanks for that. For the moment I'll enter your data in terms of 20mins a day providing 25%-35% returns per month on investments up to 2bil. Hopefully I can get some feedback from others to corroborate but your numbers sound perfectly reasonable. Do you have any current impression of how far you could scale this in terms of isk invested at those rates of return without using more than 20mins daily? Could you also give me an idea of how long it took you to acquire the knowledge to trade successfully at your current levels of return? If you had to put in more time initially to learn the markets please let me know so we can get an idea of the entry barrier.

@Sourise
Thanks! That's very helpful and the returns you indicate correlate quite closely with those I would have expected when previously producing T2 mods myself. I certainly accept that this is a low effort business. However, my own experience suggests that running it efficiently, as it sounds like you are doing, would take more than 20mins a day due to the number of tasks involved (setting up the queues, moving stuff around the pos, running supplies in and finished product out, clicking the buy orders and sell orders, and probably some others that I have forgotten). Could you give me an estimate either of the amount of time taken in total per day on your setup, including logistics and the buying and selling, or of the proportion of the business you could run if you were restricted to 20mins? I take it that running product out to Hek or Amarr on a daily basis wouldn't be possible, thus restricting the markets to just one hub on this time-frame? Alternatively, if you did periodic runs that would involve carrying quantities of stock for extra days, thus reducing efficiency and % returns, I assume?

Hey, you're the one who felt the need to counter the offhand claim that he maintains an intellectual fiefdom to feed his own ego with hours and hours of nauseating and ultimately inappropriate argumentation.

Seems like exactly what "the King of MD" would do.

I stand by my interpretation of what goes on here (somehow in spite of your farcical attempts to "prove" it wrong), and will continue to propagate this message when and how I deem it appropriate. If you don't care to respond, that is fine by me.

Your memory is really terrible. It's no wonder you can't manage to hold your argument together consistently. I responded to your offhand claim with a flippant response, as seemed appropriate. You proceeded to condemn this as 'Pretty weak considering your available faculties', clearly suggesting that you thought a fully response was in order.



I haven't tried to 'prove' you wrong. I have tried to get you to elucidate and support your position, which you have refused to do.

There clearly won't be any point in responding to repeated assertions of your position in the future since you offer nothing to grapple with. If you won't even try to support your position there is nothing to talk about. It's merely rhetoric.

I would agree with this entirely. However, I don't have the skill-set to carry out the kind of complete analysis needed and I'm not sure anyone on MD would be willing to spend the time necessary to provide such an analysis. Those who may have the skills certainly don't seem to be offering them up (nudge). I'm certainly an amateur when it comes to any type of economic analysis but we have to proceed with the tools available, just as we do with the ingame market (the behaviour of which I also cannot account for in the way that you would like).

On the other hand, I think that if it can be established (and I'm not certain it can) that following common sense rules (e.g. don't invest in anyone who doesn't offer any business plan at all; don't invest in anyone who vocally supports scamming) would have achieved a positive outcome for investors in the past and that this is unlikely to have been based on pure luck (as an exceptional run of good luck is unlikely precisely because it is exceptional) then we are better off than we were when we didn't even know if that was the case. Equally, if it proves impossible to create a decent set of rules on the basis of historical data (which I suspect it may be for at least some segments of the investment market - that is, a successful set may be possible for somone looking to keep 5bil in play but not for someone looking to keep 20bil in play) then, again, that will leave me feeling more informed than I was before making the attempt. There will be more persuasive force in a failure than in a success but either will provide more information than the current intuitive approach to divining an answer.





I'm not entirely clear on what you would want covered in such an explanation. Something beyond the simple outline narrative that enough people do carry over codes of behaviour from the real world to eve that restrict them from breaking interpersonal commitments (even though they are able to do so with no legal and minimal social consequences in game)? Much beyond this and you will probably end up requiring full-fledged theories about human behaviour in general and the proportions of people who act in different ways and for different reasons. I'm not sure whether you mean something along these lines or a more financially grounded explanation, although it seems to me the question will turn not on the successes or failures of businesses but on whether people act in certain ways and whether it is possible to predict such behaviour.



I'm not so sure. Individuals may be unpredictable but that does not mean that we can never make useful predictions when dealing with them. We do it all the time and with varying degrees of success in real life. Personally, I'm currently inclined to think that, for instance, certain patterns of behaviour will be very unattractive to scammers and that the number of scammers in one's potential pool of investments can be greatly restricted by only pooling those who conform to these patterns. This won't get rid of scam/defaults entirely but it seems to me to be a reasonable approach to limiting their number. And if you can limit their numbers then you may have a reasonable expectation of achieving certain outcomes on the basis of past data about the relative sizes of the pools of scam and non-scam offerings.



This is as true in physics as in the area under discussion here. I'm not sure it is really a relevant point as it is simply a feature of any reasoning based on data gathered in the past and restricted from gathering secure data from the future.

I for one welcome our new dark-skinned, sunglass-wearing overlords!

You'd be right except people don't make decisions about what they "like" and "dislike" in a vacuum, especially not when it involves something so alien and convoluted as spaceships investing. I'm sure a lot of people have "liked" investing based on the false impression that they get from reading the in-crowd's discourse, right up to the point where they lost all their **** because they actually had no idea what was really going on.

Now, you can say "too bad for them" or "that's their own fault" or "haha suckers more pie for me omnomnomnom", which are all fine responses. I just want the people around here to say it. I want them to acknowledge that they are playing an inside game at the expense of the casual passerby specifically by maintaining an either self-deluded or purposefully deceitful rosy veneer to what is in fact an ugly little confidence game.

That's the issue.

My actual production team currently consists of five toons that do invention, and 3 of those toons also do manufacturing, and three other toons that do nothing but make copies of the BPOs. The 3 copy toons need to log on once every 2d 4hr to queue up a set of 10 copy jobs each, which takes about 10 minutes per toon. The invention toons each log on 4-5 times per day (when i wake up, just before I go to work, when i get home from work, and before I got to bed) and queue up 10 invention jobs which also takes about 10 minutes per toon. Three of the five invention toons also queue up manufacturing jobs 2-3 times per day depending on the number of successful invention jobs (usually when i wake up, when i get home from work, and before bed) which takes about 5 minutes per toon.

As far as Purchasing, selling, and hauling of materials and finished products, I buy 28 days worth of materials at one time, produce for 28 days straight, and then make one run to either Jita, Rens/Hek, or Amarr (round trip to any hub takes about 1 hour) once every 28 days to sell finished products and pick up mats for the next month. I run out to the POS when I arrive with a load of mats, spread the datacores among the Labs, and the manufacturing materials among the Assembly Arrays. At that point, I can get to work and don't have to run out to the POS except when I need to fetch the resulting T1 BPCs from copy jobs, and T2 BPCs from successful invention jobs, which I do once every 4-5 days and I do it in a frigate or shuttle so it takes mere minutes at most. I usually also make one trip to the POS in an Orca once a week or so and pick up the stockpile of T2 items (I also grab any BPCs so I don't have to make a second trip). The Orca trip still only takes a few minutes at most because I warp to a bookmarked spot at the POS, move a very short distance (2000-3000 meters about), and am in range to access the storage ALL of the labs and ALL the assembly arrays, and then dock back up.

A total time spent per week of about 30 to 35 Hrs (mostly due to the short invention and manufacturing times for the item I make). While that amount of hours may seem like a lot and might sound like anything but "semi-afk", keep in mind that short log-in episodes a few times per day does tend to add up quickly.

Basically, I wake up each day, log on, spend about an 30 minutes to an hour queueing up invention and manufacturing jobs, log off, log on before I go to work for about 30 to 45 min and queue up another set of invention jobs, log off and go to work, come home from work, log in and spend 30min to an hour queueing up invention and manufacturing jobs, log off and go do whatever (go to the bar, hang with friends, eat dinner, etc), log on one more time for about 30-45 min and queue up a set of invention jobs, log off and go to bed, rinse and repeat until filthy stinkin' rich.

Picking a T2 item that has a longer invention and manufacturing time would require less log-ins per day and much, much less overall time per week. Some items, even with my number of toons, would only require 1 log-in for 1 hr every 1 day or so... about 5-7 hrs per week total.

Using my current process, if I was forced to limit myself to about 20 minutes of playtime per day, I would probably be limited to using 1-2 copy toon logging in for 10 minutes every 2.25 days, and 1 invention/manufacturing toon logging in for 5-10 minutes twice per day. That combination would be about 20 minutes per day, an additional 10 minutes every third day, and an additional one hour to Purchase/Haul/Sell once per month, and earn a profit of about a billion ISK every 28 days. So, Doing T2 production 20 minutes per day would be about equal to investing 10 billion ISK at 10% interest rate (assuming you don't invest in a scam).



As far as coming up with a reason to do MD investing instead of other activities, there are certainly reasons to do so. For instance, certain times of the year I don't have the ability to play much or at all due to the fact that I need to work a lot and/or have real life responsibilities (typically from Thanksgiving to New Years Day, and also from May to July) so I usually invest my money in-game during those months. The profit I earn from investing covers the cost to buy a PLEX for those months so I don't have to A.) unsubscribe my accounts for those 4 months, and B.) stop training skills for those 4 months. I am sure that other people can think of times when they can not play, or simply don't want to play.. investing during those times would keep you earning some ISK at least. Also, since Eve is a cold, dark, brutal place.. I only invest in secured loans/bonds.

Have tryied 4-5 times to just read all that walls and walls and more walls of pointless.
I'm ashamed to admit, but that's more than Jita local chat to withstand, for my eyes. Pain.

You bro have my full respect saying loud what's on my mind.
+1, Like, +1 Rep and +10 whatever from me.

I disagree with the seperation of combat and industrial capital ship construction. The difference in entry barrier is virtually non-existant, they require the same skills and the difference in capital needed is much less than the difference between for example invention and industrial cap construction. I'm also not sure how the added risk factors in - especially not as it is assumed couriers are used for more or less all logistics in both cases. The added costs of couriers for combat ships is something to be considered while discussing returns - not risks.

I'm also curious as to the invention limitation, where the entry barrier is really exceptionally low. ISK-wise you can set an operation up for well under 100 mil isk, and time spent can easily be fitted into the 20 minute slot suggested. It is also one of those ivnestments where higher investments yield less workload rather and lower returns, contrary to capital ship production which more or less is the contrary.

You will also run into the huge issue of overlapping and grey areas. Is the 20 minute slot a single slot of 20 minutes or can it be distributed to 10 slots of 2 minutes, greatly improving the efficiency of faster paced 0.01 warring market trades? Or can it be 2 minutes of accepting courier contracts to ship from Jita to rens, and then afk a number of alts down there and back, a few times a day not using more than 20 minutes active time but far more than that in time logged in.(Not claiming it's a valid option, but it's quite important to settle on how the test case actually looks).

As for overlapping I'll go back to invention. If I decide to invent a jump freighter, I will be doing so on the assumption that prices will have stayed the same or increased for the final product by the time all processes are done, which can easily be considered to cover 3 months or more. At what point is that considered speculation rather than invention?

I'd be happy to contribute figures of slowselling, invention, cap production(of both kinds) but as I'm not sure how to properly crop the operations I have a hard time doing so as virtually nothing of it is linear when it comes to time/capital invested versus returns.

Basically, give me a rough figure on what kind of capital investment is likely(5 mil, 50 mil, 500 mil, 5000 mil, 50'000 mil), what kind of time assignment may be used, what kind of skills that are allowed and assumed. Not to mention the amount of characters allowed to be involved. Does plex costs have to be covered by the investment? Many investments scale with the use of multiple characters and accounts, others - like MD investments are unchanged.