Market Discussions

To traders in a certain market who on certain items are too lazy determine the amount they need to minimally undercut someone and undercut by 10k or 100k every time just to be sure...you suck.

And to the people who don't do this, but take your stock of 100 items and undercut the person above's 3 items instead of letting them get sold or buying them out...you suck.

But let's keep going boys. You'll save me a Jita trip soon enough.

Yes I'm mad bro.

And yes, I've only been doing this for a couple months so I'm sure this is nothing new and feel sorry for the people who have been putting up with this for years.

So you're saying to put up smaller orders so when the price does bottom out I'm not stuck with inventory with bad margins?

Or that my orders come off the market quicker so the other traders don't need to undercut me?

The problem I'm running into is I would say on average everyone needs to reset their prices about 2-3 times sell a reasonable amount of inventory to make this worth while. However, prices are getting reset 6-8 times a day by a few traders and every time they reset their prices lower at the 10k level. So I've seen items that yielded 400k profit and move by about 30-50 a day for their have their margins drop in half over the last 3 days.

Buying them out will be an option when I have some more capital.

or because they feel that there isn't enough demand for the item at the price you are trading at, and want to drop it a bit more so that their goods can process faster.

Or because they know how to get the items cheaper than you.

Or because they are trying to drive you out of the market.

Or because they like to see you suffer.

Lots of reasons why people can do that.

There can be a useful purpose to this. One it keeps someone from immediately undercutting you, and it encourages a larger participant to buy out your offer and sell it for his price. Sometimes I would rather have the money immediately. I don't want to wait around for 3 days to have the cash...

A little risk management goes a long way. Look at the market history and take away the extreme spikes in the market, that is probably market manipulation. Then check the volume to make sure you can move the product fast enough and to know how much you should buy. If you have enough stock to supply Jita for a month, you probably will never be able to move it all. Also check how many buy and sell orders there are that were made in the last 24 hours. If its 2 or 3 sell orders you can play the .01 isk game. If it is 10 or 15 sell orders you should steer clear of that item. You will have too much competition and it will be a waste of your time. You are not the only one who sees high margins and imagines themselves becoming rich off that item, dozens and perhaps hundreds of other people see it too. Don't get too attached to an item. Its pathetically easy to run up the price on most anything with next to no investment. People are like lemmings, you will all go over the cliff with them if you follow the crowd.

Rage like OP make me do it :p

That, and to earn isk to suport my horrible pvp skills.


But really, i mess with the market being bored, the isk earned is just bonus.


Drive down price , then buy up, procede to resell for profit.

Or

Drive price up, then dump stock on him bought cheap before.

Doing it 0.01 isk at the time takes to long, and gives another guy the time to mess up the plan or jump in on it.

I remember back when I first got into trading actually getting the name of the guy who was dropping the price by stupid amounts (changing the margin from 400k to 300k, wut?). Actually sent him a rather annoyed mail questioning his reasons, to which he simply said he wanted to sell faster, despite me pointing out I was undercutting all the same. It had no impact on his methods so I haven't done it since haha.

Basically aside from people doing it on purpose to annoy you, I genuinely think people are convinced that will help them sell faster, although it does depend on your methods. If you're looking to put the order up, then leave it and come back in a week to find it sold, then just half the margins and walk away. If everyone else continues to shrink the margin, eventually people stop manufacturing/buying new goods, whilst the demand remains the same and stock levels are bought up until people look again and go 'hey, 400k margin lets trade in that'.

Although if this really frustrates you, just broaden your range of items and don't worry about the exact margin on any one item. If you're trading in enough items, then chances are while one is suffering from people crashing the margins, another is enjoying unusually high margins.

I'm with the guy above. Don't take it personally

If I raged every time there's a 5k units buy order that crashes margins on tech, I wouldn't be on this planet anymore.

Be smart and deal with it.