Market Discussions

So I'm not exactly sure what times of types I should be buying, I guess what I'm trying trying to ask is, should I buy any and all items as long as there is a demand for them and the profit margin is decent?

I'm pretty bad so I have no idea if this is the best way but it's what I do.

Find where you want to set up shot, and go through every single item available in that station. Look at the chart view in the item history and look at how often it sells. Add fast moving ones to your quickbar and keep continuing down until you have enough to satisfy you or you're done

I would suggest finding a good trade hub (Amarr, Rens, Dodixie or Hek) to setup shop and then find items that have decent trade volume and still decent spread. Jita seems to be the hardest place to start because it has such high volume that one cannot always find the best spread.

What is a 'Spread'?

A spread is the difference between the bid and the ask price of an item in the market.

After some time one should look to expand to minor trade hubs to take advantage of opportunities to make some sweet isk.

Buy items you know toons in your area will need in the near future. Follow the DEV posts to see what the latest trends will be (i.e SKINS or new tech like citadels and ship changes). Buy loot items that you know PvEers will want to unload easily but PvPers like to buy for cheap meta fits.

The market is dynamic, so there is not a one size-fits-all answer, AND today's answer will be obsolete tomorrow.

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So you needed 3 attempts to put all your genius into one question and had nothing left to come up with something helpful?


To the OP:
Here's the link to an extensive guide to station trading you might find interesting:
https://wiki.braveineve.com/public/dojo/wiki/station_trading_complete_guide

Station trading has some nuances that can make it quite complex. Also this makes it difficult to answer your question. The correct answer probably is "it depends".

For example, if your trading habits include to hold items for some time, this means you'll tie up your trading capital. In that case you should make sure to have a diverse asset portfolio (never put all your eggs into one basket). Once you have enough capital you will end up betting on market trends instead of just chasing daily margins. But you should never use up all your liquid ISK for this.

Also it's always wise to check demand. It's no good to heavily invest in an item just because today's margin is quite good when that item moves very slow. Buying several such items means that the margin needs to be good tomorrow, too. And also the day after tomorrow.

Additionally you should check interconnectedness of items. For example PLEX and Skill Injectors are tied, meaning price changes in PLEX will be mirrored in Skill Injectors.

Furthermore you might be interested in patch speculation. For example I bought some worthless junk items a good while ago when there was no demand and no profit margin at all. These items came into demand when they were added as crafting components for certain items. Now I am looking at an ROI of 10,000% (ten thousand) and more.

Besides, don't forget that the profit margin is not profit in itself. Profit is the combination of margin and trading speed. Trading an item “A” with a profit margin of 1m ISK/trade is better than trading an item “B” with a profit margin of 2m ISK/trade, if you can trade item “A” more than twice as fast than item “B”.

what a silly advice. why would you have your money locked up in a sale sitting there waiting for you to sell it? ISKies should be like little slave workers turning over and over 24/7 making you profit.
but the time you have waited for profit margin to increase, you could make more money buying and selling immediately many times at a smaller profit margin.

Because I don't trade 24/7? For me it's about the ISK per hour spend on trading and not about max. ISK while doing nothing else. I use station trading for some nice semi-passive ISK. A bit like PI. And I don't mind that a good chunk of my ISK is invested in assets. Look at the economic reports: A lot more ISK are generated every day than blown up resulting in inflation.

Best thing you can do is to find something or somewhere without much or any competition. Can’t tell you what I trade, but it is a quite comfortable way to make easy ISK. If you trade like the UNI-Wiki sites or the forum majority tells you to, how much competition can you expect? Creativity works as well (if not better) than the spreassheets everyone else uses.

10 bil at 1 mil profit is a million trades? dude, dont do station trading with your math skills. or you will be one of those who once bought 3 of my implants at 10 times the price, instantly making me half a billion richer :) I wish I had a larger buy order at the time, not just 3.

Jita isnt that bad its just finding the right items and having to play the 0.01 isk game with others. The other issue you are faced with in jita are the idiots who kill the profit margins just for quick sales when they could easily make more with a little patience, especially since its the main hub that has a lot of traffic.

I was playing the game in afk mode the past few months due to real life but from what I have seen over the past 3 weeks is that there is another issue to take into consideration and that is sales in Perimeter. There are a lot of sellers who are adjusting their pricing to match the sales in that area when its not needed at all and they're losing profit from those who are buying in the jita 4-4 station. I would understand if the customers were buying regionally but most of the time its from the 4-4 station.


Also to the op be careful of the other players who want to buy directly (trade scam) you may be approached in time when they notice you selling the same items to them over and over again.