Market Discussions

So I started with Eve, got me a freighter, learned about the API and wrote a software that would compare buy/sell orders for selected regions to show me the most profitable deals (buyorder higher than sell order elsewhere).

But that doesn't seem much. The best deals I've had so far are about 3 million ISK for like 50 jumps back and forth.

So I added a feature to my software, comparing mean averages for products between selected regions. That ended in a fiasco. As it turned out, while the profit might be great in theory, you sure need people to buy the stuff and the trade volume for the stuff I bought was just too low.

I am obviously doing something terribly wrong. People on the internet claim to make a billion ISK per day with one or two hours of trading. I can trade a whole day for 10 hours, flying back and forth transporting minerals (as they seem to be the only items to have buy orders that are higher than sell orders elsewhere) and earn maybe 20 million.

Can someone with experience please help me learn trading? In exchange, I'll adjust my software to your needs also. I can make any data analysis you want (region/product comparisons etc.) automatically.

Please help!

Sounds like you are buying from sell orders to sell to buy orders.

In which case: You're doing it WRONG.

Nope. you are quite wrong there.

Artbitrage trading works between hubs. and works well for players like the owner of "haulers channel" (rita jita), who says his profit so far this month is 107b, doing just what you are saying not to.

"says"

And, having sold things to him on a number of occasions, I can confirm that he does buy off of sell orders (though obv I can't say whether that's the only way he gets his stuff).

Rita set up the Hauling channel to provide a place for him to flog his contracts, which are usually something like 2b collateral and ~2m ISK/jump. (And set up like 10 at a time from each Hub)

I really doubt he flies Freighters much.

If OP Idles in Haulers channel, he will soon get the hang of arbitrage, just by hauling others packages around and taking a peak inside the packages.

most of them need 2-3b in collateral, tho but u can price check before haul then after & maybe piggy back the trade.

I have audited a guy in the past who did a series of very high profit (to investors) bonds.
Each bond he started, he'd spend about 20 days out of 30 analyzing the markets and in the last 10 days he'd deliver stuff left and right making some amazing profits. Never seen someone else doing his tecnique again.

Mais Sha' sit yo butt in dat station and start to bought some tangs. den, start to sell dem tangs. you need dem basics T! stop flying around space for a minute and trade in jita, that'll learn you sometin

I think you are making the same mistake I did when I tried this.

Although I did it the old fashioned way with a note pad, rather than writing a API program. You are looking for the highest profit items rather then the high volume items.

Say we have 3 skilled traders. All have a plan and have done their research.

Trader 1 finds an opportunity to make 10% moving goods 15 jumps. But the volume is limited to 100,000m3.

Trader 2 finds an opportunity to make 3% profits but can only find 500,000m3 of the product

trader 3 finds an opportunity to make only 1% profit but near unlimited volume. He only has the capital to do 4 freighter loads at
850,000m3 each, or 3,400,000m3

For simplicity in the math lets just say the 10% works out to 20 isk/m3.

Trader 1 makes 2,000,000 isk profit at 20 isk/m3

Trader 2 makes 3,000,000 isk profit at 6 isk/m3

trader 3 makes 6,800,000 isk profit at 2 isk/m3

Ok you can say, yes but if they all had to travel 15 jumps the isk/hr isk less with the higher volume. But what if trader 3 only had to go 3 jumps? 3 x 4 loads is only 12 jumps compared to 15, at a much higher total profit.

But where the real big isk comes in, you don't even leave the station. The more capital you have to invest the less profit per unit you need to make 1 Billion isk per day. For example if you only had 1 bil capital to start with you need to make 100% profit to pull in 1 bil. But if you had 50 bil capital you only need 2% profit to pull in 1 bil. But with a good plan your 100 mil can turn into 1 bil fairly quickly, then 2 bil, then 10 bil, etc.

As long as you keep investing rather than spending it you can build you capital high enough to easily sustain a 1 Bil per day income, even when only playing a few hours. And you can do it without leaving the system, or even the station. This is station trading.

How does this work. Well it really is as simple as buy low sell high. But the key is you work with lower profit margins at higher volume. Pick a high volume item, such as an ore or mineral that comes in and out of your hub in high volumes. Find one where the buy orders are a workable margin below the sell orders. You set up your own buy orders at a reasonable rate with what ever capital you have available. if you set a good median price on an item that moves in high volume you do not have to worry so much about the 0.01 isk games. your orders will fill. Once filled you resell the stuff as a sell order at say a 3-5% mark up from what you paid. After paying taxes and station fees you will still have a 1-3% profit margin if you do it right. The more capital you have to invest the more isk/hr you can make doing this. It does not have to be ore or minerals, but any items that moves in high volumes in your trade hub.

Keep an eye on what the item should be worth though. you do not want to buy at a peek and have to sell at a loss after the price drops. or worse hold onto it until the price comes back up. I say this is worse because often the small loss you would take is better than the loss you would have from having that capital tied up not making you isk.

As long as you set a reasonable price your orders will fill, although sometimes more slowly. as the price goes up and down through the day it will pass your price point at which time your order will fill. If not then your price is to high or too low. The 0.01 isk games, while not needed to make this work, will allow you to ensure your orders fill faster by being closer to the best price. If you have the time and patience you can move far more volume this way, even at a slightly lower profit, you will make more isk.

Once you have many billions to play with you will find it more and more difficult to keep your full capital working for you. This is when market manipulations and speculation become fun. With enough isk invested in a single item you can temporarily shift markets. This is risky but if done right can pay off huge.

If you have enough capital to buy all of an available item that is in demand, the prices of buy orders will quickly go up. When this happens many more traders try to get in on it before it starts to crash again. This drives the price even higher. You wait and watch as the price climbs, and resell your huge stock slowly, to avoid causing the prices to crash too quickly. you can easily make 20-30% profits doing this rather than the 3-5% you would normally make off the same item.

Then there is market speculation. This is done by watching CCP dev news, blogs, and even sov wars, destroyed ships need to be replaced. A big war can affect the markets. When you see a coming change that could affect a supply then you can speculate as to the exact impact of that change, for example stock up on minerals before the change causes the price to go up. Or like we saw more recently with the ship changes, stock up on certain hulls that are about to have there mineral requirements increased. This can be very risky though, as you never know exactly how the market will react, and how many others share your speculation. Procurers had there mineral requirements changed many moths ago and still sell well below the new build costs. Some times the speculation causes a bigger price surge than the actual game change.

the idea here is to build you capital until it gets to a sustainable point where the daily profits can fund your other game activities, like PVP. If you get to a point where you can easily sustain 1 bil isk per day profit with only a few hours work, as long as you do not touch your base capital you can spend all the profits on PVP ships, and never lose that income.