Market Discussions

It is easier to list a single stack. However, there can be a benefit for "sandwiching" orders in cases where you have a lot of competition from other sellers.

How many orders do you have available? How often do you update your orders? How many items do people tend to buy at once?

Those are the questions that will guide you to the answer to your question.

If you have lots of orders, it doesn't really hurt. If you're constantly banging into the limits, I'd avoid splitting.
If you update more than once every 5 minutes, then 2 orders let you leapfrog them, keeping a lower price more often. But that's 0.01 isk games, and not fun.
If people tend to buy in bulk, keep one order, as the bulk is then more evident to people looking for it. If they don't, it doesn't matter.

Thank's for the replies.. that makes a lot of sense and is pretty much exactly what I needed to know :)

Just to explain that one part a little better:

Basically, one of the ideas behind placing multiple sell orders is that you can use them to create or solidify a "going price," which will suggest a proper price for anybody putting up the same item after you. For example, if there are 200 modules in a given station, and they're all in the one order that you put up, anybody could drop in, and from the looks of it that price wouldn't be well-established. There would be lots of wiggle-room, psychologically, for wild undercutting, or whatever other reaction you could imagine a competitor having. So in some cases, you may choose to split up an order so that it creates the illusion of an established price level. Psychologically, this has the effect of creating a sense of inevitability in a newcomer to that market niche. They think to themselves, "I'll fall in line with the current prices, because I alone am not big enough to change them."

I think a general rule of playing the markets in EVE is that, if you feel something, a certain emotion, in the process of trading, you can bet that others do, as well. For example, when I have a glut of a certain item dumped onto my buy order in a single station, and then I go to post those items up for sale only to find that others have driven the margins down like crazy, that makes me mad. I feel like, well crap, why did I have to get these all dropped on me in THIS STATION, of all stations? Why couldn't I have gotten them over in Station X, where the margins are much higher? Sometimes in these situations, I feel like just messing with the people behind those other orders. Sometimes I feel like buying them out and relisting everything at a higher price. I try to fight these urges whenever I can, because they are almost always reckless and bad for my bottom line. But I imagine other people share those emotions, and the knowledge gleaned from that imagining is knowledge that can be used to my own purposes.

If you are interested in market manipulation and chaos playing then multiple stacks are the way to go as well. If you have 5-8 stacks and update them randomly then others will think there are other players in the market and complete. Its easier to get someone to follow you down when they see 10 other orders moving down as well of varying sizes. The bots will also do the same thing, especially those programmed to look for outlying moves.

Edit: the same applies to buy orders as well. Better to put multiple buy order stacks if you are facing an active item as it allows you to keep your order near the top.

I always sandwich them like this so I'm not stuck with a huge lot of items to sell at a specific price if the market tanks to ****. Sure, you can always modify it but that just increases overhead costs and reduces profit margins.