Market Discussions

Is trading in EVE dieing? Absolutely not. As the OP said, the are to many traders. Dieing would mean the number of traders were dropping off.

Trading is not dieing, it is becoming mainstream. everyone is now doing it, at least to some extent.

Trading is becoming less and less profitable, but that is not because it is dieing, but because it has become more popular than the market can sustain. It is becoming harder and harder to get rich off trading. Only players with billions of isk to play with can turn a decent profit, if you can make 5-10% profit you are doing great.

However I do see where the OP is coming from. 5 years ago you could get very rich very quickly through trading. Back then it was common to see 50% profits on a trade. But now trading has become so popular it has pulled profits down to the bare minimum.

The best way to push out your competition is to make sure they can not make any isk competing with you. Much like we have seen in manufacturing, without all skills maxed out the profits are just not there. Now we are seeing the same thing with trading. If you do not have all the relevant skills maxed out, you will have a hard time making profit.

Those that do have the skills maxed out, make up for the lower profits by dealing in larger volumes. Just as we have seen in manufacturing for several years now. If those high volume trades make less than 5% profit, it is very easy for that 5% to get eaten up by taxes and broker fees. What this means is the traders that have put in the time to max out the skills, and build up standing with the right corps. These traders can corner the market on those high volume goods. If the isk you are spending on taxes and broker fees is going in their pocket as profit, then they can sell at a lower cost differential than you can. Effectively pushing you out of the market. or at least making that market not profitable for you. Then with less competition, they can do higher volumes to make up for the lower profit per trade.

The only advice I can give is get used to it, it is only going to get worse. As more and more traders get there skills and standings up, the margins will get tighter and tighter.

It's the pre-expansion slump combined with the post-summer slump and the back-to-school slump.

If only a few well-placed supernovae would liven things up a bit... I'm sure those nasty Talocan left a few nasty surprises... sigh.

... and would also be interesting to see if Dr. E. has been any significant change in the amount of Low End minerals being shipped out ot Null, and High Ends being shipped into Empire. "Rebalance" may not necessarily be a good thing for overall "balance".

Or maybe CONCORD will take a few days off.

That's one of the marvellous things about trading: you look at all those slaves grinding their lives off making undervalued LP and slowly shake your head.
Later on you'll pick up that very stuff and, with no effort, will trade for higher profits than they did in a month of hard work.

I've made a good portion of my EVE fortune selling goods for more than people know they should cost.

I even sell stuff in the forge regularly for prices 30% above what they can clearly see they cost if they took 4 jumps to Jita

The same is even more true in other regions....

You do need to move some stuff ... at times what I do might be called "retailing" rather than "trading" ... depending how much moving there was going on. Yeah, if I do enough of that I'm reducing the volume in the HUBs.. to the extent people didn't need to go there to get the same thing. I don't know if you define that as less trading or not.

edit maybe i'm more agreeing with you that taking issue on some points

I think that Many (edit) are missing an element here.. "Milk not Cars"

you're using this model that applies to the real world and also applies to EVE but .. the orders of magnitude are so much greater for what might seem like "large ticket" items

that really.. many pilots are being Irrational when they seek the lowest price.. if seeing that price will take them 10 minutes.

That is predicated on a players's ability to earn high ISK per hour . I understand that maybe only 25% of players or maybe even 10% of players earn ISK per hour on the Incursion Scale of isk per minute. On the other side of the spectrum.. there are people who buy their isk via PLEX .. where they see 100 million isk as 2 or 3$ that they'd gladly pay not to fly 6 jumps to jita and 6 jumps back... taking an extra 15 minutes just to buy a fit ship for 100 million instead of 200 million.

Basically a big chunk of pilots who lose a ship 6 or 7 jumps out are better off if they pay twice the cost of million isk modules and pay 40% more for a hull IF they can fit the ship out of their inventory at their deployment station and things for sale in their system

RATIONAL players.. should create what might look like an irational values . Those are rational players who value their time Opportunity-cost-ingame and/or buy isk from a mind set that they'd gladly pay $ to avoid drudgery in game.

Basically.. the issue is:

players can make enough isk to buy a "big purchase item" ship, in an hour or two.. many who do incursions might pay for a fit BC in 20 minutes

REAL LIFE Analogy : Buying Milk or Beer or Coke at the corner store when you're out. --- sometimes it is worth palying 5$ instead of driving 5 to 20 more minutes each way to go to the lower priced supermarket.. walk in from the parking lot etc.

Ships in EVE.. evern with T2 modules are more like Milk in terms of human hours taken, and not even remotely like purchasing a car which takes a whole year of work.

Saving ISK to get a "good deal" on a 5 turrets.. "not getting ripped off paying 2 million isk each when they sell for 1 million in jita"... is ROLE PLAY.... its just based on immersion and sense that "this is valuable , I should get a good deal" .... saving 6 million isk from the 6 turrets just isn't remotely worth pausing from other activities you would prefer doing or that mke you isk

It is good role play though.. without "immersion" we don't have a game .. and the idea "this is valuable" is an important part of the buy in.

1/2 of my trading activities are role play.. maybe more. I know if I wanted to optimized my Isk/hour trading I'd just scale out the same things I know make isk all over the universe (I do to some extent to pay for my accounts) and never tinker around witth stuff that makes me150 million a month with a lot of attention needed.

I find it ******** those 40jump-orders for tritanium, minimum order 1 unit.

LOL?

I wonder if those guys actually pick up all the crap all over the galaxy or they just enjoy their spammed Assets window.