Market Discussions

i'm just 2 month old newbie. this is my trading alt, and my main is 2mil sp mission runner.

at first glance of this game, i was really attracted of the dynamical economy of this game, because you see, no other MMO has this kind of economy in which prices are mainly determined by players. I'm taking finance in my college and this can be a great medium of economy simulation as i have a goal in my real life to become an investor & entrepreneur. i know some of you may think i'm a fool to mix RL with EVE, but well, i'm still a college boy with no capital in RL. so i think maybe this is a great opportunity to taste what trading feels like.

i read some successful bloggers of EVE. Most of them are profiting in trading & manufacturing. i learned that trading in EVE require some temperament because of the 0.01isk-er. some people hate it, but some love it. but my main problem is that, it seems that i cant make significant profit from trading.

god, there are even some people who are capable to buy PLEX in their trial just from trading. im sure there are many of them, but only a few documented them in their blog. reading their posts makes me want to build multi-millionaire manufacturing corporation even more (yeah.. i'm an unrealistic dreamer).

at first i think that i would make losses because of my lack of experience, and i did. well, i was almost at the point where "its impossible to make profit from trading" but eventually, i realized that i started to make minor profit from regional trading. i realized that the profit from trading is not similar like profit from missioning, where you get liquid cash directly. profit from trading is in the form of assets and therefore unstable because there are too many factors that affect your assets value such as unfulfilled sell orders when price drops..

.. and maybe, time zone?

i just realized this when i stumbled upon this thread.



holycrap, that's 03:00 to 07:00 in my time zone. i think that's why my orders are rarely fulfilled.

and i cant afford to babysit my order every 5 minutes to respond with the 0.01 isk-er. It's simply because i dont like to do a cartel-like market competition. smart trader speculate, monitor, and travel around the world to find a good deal. thats what i'm trying to imply. but again.. this time zone problem..

just about several weeks ago i was weary of this 0.01 isk game and decided to invest in creating a carebear missioning alt to ensure low risk, steady profit. I know it may not the best way to make money in PVE, but what any other choices i got? FW plexing is probably worse than missioning that you have to D-scan like crazy. high sec exploration is overcrowded, and low-sec exploration is risky (well, maybe not in my time zone. someone care to convince me?).

allright so the big question that this clueless newbie want to ask is:

1. is my profit are correlated to my time zone?
2. or it is because of the 0.01 isker?
3. or i'm just suck at trading?

end of the rambling. i appreciate any critics and suggestions. i do expect some trolls and flames too of course. after all, this is internet.

EDIT: i dont know why the link wont show up. here is the link to the thread in EVE-U (copy and paste it): http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=69220

This is very much an international game, with players all over the world. The only real "spikes" of activity i have noticed consistently are weekends. From Friday to Monday prices fluctuate a lot (trending towards up for things like ships and ammo)

I have noticed spikes around 6 PM to 8 PM on the market (confirmed by eve income analyzer, but could just be when I update orders) and 12 AM - 2 AM for blueprints on contracts.

I never update my orders more than every second day and still make a good profit with both, my station and regional trading activicties. It all depends on the average profit margin of your orders and of course the number of orders.

Traders with thousands of active orders make easily billions a day with hardly updating orders ever. MoxNix is a good example for that http://merchantmonarchy.blogspot.co.at/