Market Discussions

I wanted to create this forum post to detail what trading I have done so far, and the successes and failures I have encountered. I wont be that secretive, as I am certain that the trades I have and am involved with, are nothing new and in some cases, not that successful!

I hope that the wisdom and experience of MD will be able to shed some light on how I can improve my strategies, and in general help me with advice.

The story begins with me deciding after plexing my accounts, and funding a little project I have underway, I would invest half of my liquid isk into market trading, and put to use, this, zero skill point char which has sat in jita as a price checker and contract maker since creation. I decided that I would being focusing on station trading, and, although unsure about my decision, went ahead with Jita as my location. I was reluctant to begin in Jita, because of the massive competition, but decided that the volume of items moved through this station was too important to not give it a go.

Using the duel training feature, I set up a skill plan to maximize my trade skills as soon as possible, but started trading with my 5bil immediately to start to get the hang of things.

Week 1:

The first week in this new world, and I believe it went quite well. I began with buy orders for high volume T2 items, such as Invul and launchers. I didn't have much time this first week to dedicate to eve, as I was moving home, and did not have a proper internet connection. However I kept on top of orders as much as possible, and managed to get buy orders filled, and sell orders sold with a profit of around 500mil by the end of the first week.

First week on the job, limited skills, zero standings, 10%profit on investment. I was quite happy with this.

Week 2:

I continued the trade of the T2 items from the previous week, but decided to also venture into the faction ship market. I had a hunch on some ships which would be paticulally over used in the upcoming Alliance Tournament, and that happend to coinside with them being popular in both PvE and PvP in game also. Obviously.. the Rattlesnake and Gila. I felt like I was making good profits on these ships, running at aprox 10mil per RS, and 8mil per Gila, however the traded volumes where low, and also the maket seemed to be flooded on a regular bacis.

I decided that I was happy to trade in these ships, and now that I had some levels in the Margin Trading skill, I would continue to trade them, but on a more 'back burner' style. They would supliment my trading, but not be the focus of it.

Towards the middle of the second week, I decided to try something. Something I felt would be risky, but worth it if it paid off.

Am not sure if this is considered market manipulation, but thats what I call it in my head. I searched through the market looking for items which filled my initial criteria:

1) The item must have a good trade volume per day
2) I must be able to afford to buy up the entire market; or enough of the market to increase the sell order price by 75-100%.

That was it. Looking back I should have been more thoughtful about the criteria, but I was excited to get stuck in and give it a go; after all, its almost impossible to loose your isk on the market... right??!!

I found the 5mn mwd fitted my criteria, and bought up all of the market until i reached the price at 1.2mil higher than the lowest I paid. I roughly worked out that the average price for the item, and what I bought was 2.7mil, and I managed to spike the price to 3.8mil.

I also found that the Co-Pro II and Cruise launcher II where good candidates and did a similar thing with these, only managed to spike the Co-pro to double the average price I paid, and the cruise launcher to just over double. I felt this was great, and my theory was; Sell half of what I bought at the, or close to, the inflated price, and the rest of the stock is pure profit no matter the price.

That however hasn't worked exactly as I planned.

I managed to sell most of the 5mn mwd at a good price, and in fact only the last 10 or so items made only 100k profit each. The rest selling for 300k profit per unit or more. However the cruise launchers are back below the average price I paid, with me only selling about 3/4 of my stock, and the co-pro are still holding good at 200k profit per unit, but I have just over half left and facing stiff competition with both the co-pro and cruise launcher.

tbc..

If the item has good volume it also means you have bigger competition. Some competition will leave if they see that you are manipulating the market, some will teach you a lesson in regional trading. The major points here are: use obscure but needed item (think EM/thermal shield rigs) and know whats the actual cost that makes up that particular item (why CN antimatter S is more expensive then FN antimatter S?). This will help you to determine how low your opposition is willing to go.

these people aren't idiots per se.

not playing the .01 isk game doesn't mean that someone isn't playing another game. deep undercutting is a very viable business strategy. i tend to do it to scare away people from updating their orders

others do it to keep a margin on a specific product in check, so it's uninteresting for those chasing the best ISK/hr, yet still interesting enough for themselves.

and don't forget those that want prices to crush only to buy everything and relist it back after a couple of days.

Actually would you please enlighten us on why CN Antimatter charges cost more than FN antimatter charges? I've always wondered since I started playing, and the only answer I seem to get is that people used to use CN ammo to link their fits and on battleclinic, so demand by noobs is simply higher.

So why does CN cost more?

When you want to control your market / margins, you want players like you out of the market ASAP, just like Gilbaron said. I won't crash the market with 100k at a time, I will just crash the market to half my normal margin, or even lower and then go for fast turnover. Then I can deplete all my speculation stock in no time. And you will have to free up isk somewhere in the future, so then you have to buy me out constantly (good luck with just 12 bil), or when you are aggressive as in going for waiting my stocks out, then I will have new orders incoming from all my industrials to continueing seeding under your speculation stock price. Like I said; get out of my market ;), and when leaving, please dump on my very low buy orders, thx.

Got it. Thanks.

Hope your new finance ventures are going well! (I get bored and read everything).

P.S. Liked your old avatar pic better. Looked more professional as well~

Thank you all, for replies, either it be interest, advice or hostility, I am just glad people have read, and I shall continue to update as I go. I will however, become a little more secretive on traded item info, you know, as space is a srs business.

Since my last update:

Some of the market manipulations I did, where mildly successful.

Cruise missile launcher II's have fully sold, albeit the last portion at a loss, but overall a 657,219,115 isk profit.
5mn Microwarp II's fully sold with a 410,165,561.26 isk profit.
*update* Co-Pro II finished at a 462,470,503 isk profit.

I was rather happy with these results, and the other 3 2 items I manipulated are still in sale, so wont divulge that info just yet. Counting chickens before they hatch is a bad idea.

I am not completely put of manipulations, and will almost certainly try again from time to time in the future, however with only 2/5 of my manipulations being completely successful, Its something I feel I need to further research before acting. It was however, a fantastic learning experience, and I feel I have learned a lot from it.

I would like to thank people who suggested to me, the idea of shipping out additional stock to other market hubs. Although I am not making big profits on these manipulated items in Jita, or elsewhere, atleast the stock is turning over freeing up the isk I need to continue with trading.

The down turn in the remaining market manipulations I have, put me in a somewhat defeatist mood, for a day or two, and so I ramped down trading activities to regain some isk through sell orders, and also re consider my moving forward.

Today I decided to take a look at the app, Eve Mogul, and have started my trial. I wish I had used this earlier, and thank you to the person (not quite sure how to link the persons reply who suggested it) who recommended me try it. The figures I report in this post, are all courtesy of this program!

With the revitalized mind, and interest in putting Eve Mogul to work, I have decided to reinvest isk, but in a more diverse manner. Currently spreading my isk over multiple items with the 10% or so profit margin, and hoping that this will be a more sustainable income over manipulations.

Some stats (Eve Mogul):

Today's Profit: -114,964,815.00 ISK
Week's Profit: -345,096,418.00 ISK
Month's Profit: 2,515,553,383.00 ISK
All Time: 2,515,553,383.00 ISK
Profit Margin: 95%

Obviously, as mentioned earlier, I sold the remaining Cruise Missile Launcher II's at a loss, and also have a couple of items left in other manipulations selling at a minor loss, however ALL of the manipulations I have done, have, or will end in overall profit... I think!

Ill be back in a few days, with further updates!

TTYL <3


*Edit* added co-pro II data

Thats how I deal with most the time, cut my losses and move on. If your isk is limited it's even better to just cut your losses so as to get your ISK working for you again.

Pay special attention to the natural cycles of items via the ingame graph. That will shed some light on whether you're buying at the high point where potential losses are more common.

o/

got your mail, so figured i would just reply to your forum.

as far as i can tell your doing very well, if i was to give any kind of advice to any new trader it would be as follows,

try a little of everything in the beginning, keeping costs low until you've decided what works best for you personally,
there are many different ways to trade in eve, and don't listen to anyone when they say "The best way is...."

imo its all about choosing a form of trading your happy to do everyday, 99% of traders hate 0.01 isk'ing, so finding others avenues is always an option, for me personally google was my inspiration, reading what others were doing to spark new idea's of my own, and trying new things (literally everything)

one thing you'll learn pretty soon though, is that if you want to continue increasing daily profits, you'll have to start thinking outside the box in regard to your trading strategies, breaking the mold as you will, and imo the best way to learn to do this is to have a firm understanding of the different trading strategies and concepts, allowing you combine everything you have learned into something new. i.e "niche market"


Since you seem to be focusing on manipulations, I'll give you an example of "outside of the box", thinking applied to basic manipulation strategy.

Step 1;
finding an item for manipulation.

look for an item that's hard to replace, items bought via LP stores are prime targets as they can't be manufactured.
keep in mind the relation between what item you have and where you are going to manipulate. as volumes will vary greatly between the regions/factions.

You want to find and item that has sell orders throughout the region, but not so much volume you can't buy out the entire market.
faction ammo being a prime example. but will work with many others, if you have the bank.

Step 2
Take over

literally buy everything in the regions including all the sell orders outside of the hub your basing at.
now the fun part begins.
your next move it to recreate the market, all those region wide sell orders your bought out will play a major part in the illusion.
(fyi you'll need the ability to sell remotely)
post everything outside of your hub, making the market look competitive, but this time your going to increase the base values of the item you bought.
since we mentioned ammo, lets say 100% above the average. percentage will vary depending on the item, (you want the price to be affordable to others)
then within your hub use volume similar to the region orders to create an active sell market, 10-20 orders for varied volumes and prices competing with each other. (its a hub after-all so 90% of the orders should be located there)

Next start doing the same thing with the buy orders within your hub, closing the 100% spread to something closer like 5-10%
keep the volumes low, but you want to make enough of these to fill the buy screen.

in the end what you should be looking at is a market completely controlled by yourself that has enough orders in both buy and sell to look legit at first glance.

Step 3
too good to be true

Now the market it setup, you can actually make some profits, take 100% of your total volume (located in your hub)
and make a item exchange contract, calculate the value of the contract compared to your new market average, leaving 15-20% profit for who ever takes the contract.
Then link it in local, renaming the contract "Fire Sale"
don't type anything else, don't try to sell the contract, literally just link the contract.

people within the hub will view the contract, and calculate the expected earning at 15-20%
considering how good this deal "seems", it will get picked up very very quick before someone else gets it.
fear of loosing out on such a good deal due to it being in local channel, people ignore all the hidden signs (market history) of the manipulation in place.

they see an active market with medium/tight spreads and no wild variances at first glance.
and considering your selling everything at 15-20% under market, it will get snapped up.

Step 4
WTF happened

Once the contract is accepted (and it will be, very quickly)
close out every buy and sell order you had on the market, this will leave the market complete blank bar the person who just accepted your contract.
you will receive a eve-mail shortly asking "how did you do that"
personally i just reply with a smile

Step 5 (optional)
Consolidation

in the end your left with a lot of loot over the region, you can haul this to the hub (or use couriers such as "Haulers Channel") and undercut the guy 5% each time he try's to complete with you, this will scare him as he knows he a less and less chance of reclaiming his capital, most people will buy your remaining stock outright after the second 5% price cut.

or you could just trash it and be happy with your 100% profit, and move onto the next item.

once you get to grips doing this, you can setup and complete the whole process in as little 15 Min's, personally i used to rotate hubs, using a per-determined list of items per hub (market research)

anyways, sorry for the wall of text but you see the point, you can take almost any trading strategy and make it your own, just got to apply knowledge and abstract thinking, to set yourself apart.

hope this helps
cheers Rita o/