Market Discussions

Welcome to the market margin scam. The buyer didn't have the isk on hand to cover the order, so it disappeared when you tried to fill it. And they most likely sold you some or all of the overpriced units you bought so yes, this is a common tactic for selling overpriced stuff. My advice is never touch these things, they're always scams.

Having said that, if you already have the items in question, you can screw with the buyer by just selling to the order. It'll go away, but they lose the brokerage fee for the order and didn't make any profit. You can also try selling the item for less than the bid price. Supposedly, if someone has cash that cover the reduced price, then the order would go through. I haven't tried this myself and a smart scammer won't have enough cash in their wallet to exploit in this way, but you might run into some not so smart scammers on occasion.

And of course, you can join the dark side and place your own ridiculous buy orders. Maybe CCP will change this dumb market mechanic, if enough people do it.

I'm not /sure/ but you may be able to sell at a reduced price, if it's below the minimum investment for margin trading isk on that order. Though I'm not sure what that is (having never used it).

Well to be safe, don't ever buy anything on contract that are being spammed in local!
Join SSC-lounge chat room to get instant help if you are unsure. Also if you are looking for something specific it is probably less chance to get scammed in there...

I am sure their is a list somewhere I think it was in MD somewhere try search for it.. Sorry don't have time myself :-(

And no, they didn't lose much, as Tasko said only some brokage fees!

Edit: SCC-Lounge

You can counter the scammer. If one's Margin Trading skill is maxed out to level 5, that means one has to place 23.7% of the value of a buy order in escrow. Thus, if you are able to get that item at less than 23% of the price of the buy order in sufficient amounts to meet the minimum quantity, sell that item to the scammer at 23% value. The buy order will be fulfilled, and the scammer will have paid you for giving him a fat stack of overpriced crap. :-)

One caveat: Before doing this, you need to be sure that you are selling to the complete order, and not just part of it. Example: Let's say Mr. Scammer places buy order for 200 of an item, with a minimum quantity of 100. If someone is able to sell Mr. Scammer 100 of that item, it will eat up some of the escrow (an amount you can't determine since you don't know how much that 100 was sold for). Therefore, if you try selling Mr. Scammer 100 of that item, he won't have 23% escrow available, and the order will fail and you will be stuck with the fat stack of overpriced crap. What this means is any time you see a margin trading scam and want to try to counter it, you have to look at the total volume of the item in the galaxy and make a bet as to whether someone else might have already fulfilled part of the order.

If you play your cards right, sometimes you can make some nice ISK by countering these scams.

You're absolutely right, and that's why I put that caveat in there. Occasionally you'll get lucky and find an item where a little research will show that there is no way there is enough of that item in the galaxy for the scammer to do the selling-to-own-order trick. That's the time to strike. I would definitely recommend that players without lots of market experience stay away from trying to counter the scam though.

Actually, this is not true.

In RL, your margin order does not fail - you end up with a negative balance. If you cannot pay off the debt, then your other assets may be seized, by court order, and applied to the debt owed.

In Eve, there is no penalty for failing a margin order.

I've suggested elsewhere that negative wallet balances should be supported, so that if you fail a margin order, then you may end up in debt. If you have a negative balance on one toon in your account, then the funds required to cover the negative balance should be seized automatically from the wallets of any other toons on the same account. If the amount cannot be covered even by all three toons on an account, then game time should be deducted from the account, using the current average PLEX price as the conversion factor for game time vs. ISK.

Then what is? Margin trading - and the market, in general - are modeled on how market economics work in RL. That is why CCP hired an RL economist.


If you are using margin trading legitimately, then the changes I proposed will have no effect on you. The proposed changes only prevent an abuse of the margin trading skill.


There is a substantial difference. The scammer is using the mechanism to artificially increase the price of an item, with no intention or commitment to purchase said item at the specified price. This is what makes it a scam, and not a legitimate transaction.

Please note that I am not claiming that this is an exploit of game mechanics. If CCP prefers to allow such market scams, then the mechanism works as intended - if not, then it is broken and should be fixed.

Like every other skill in the game, Margin Trading is designed to give players a certain benefit. If Margin Trading is going to come with a debt penalty, then why aren't there special penalties for training Drone skills, or Gunnery skills? Why should Margin Trading be the one skill in the game that can actually screw you over? Doesn't make a bit of sense.



Incorrect. Under your system, if I managed to hit 0 ISK in my wallet--even if I wasn't running the "scam" in question--I'd go into debt and have ISK or assets on my other characters seized, or game time if it came to that. Simply canceling the buy order and not giving me the items (instead of giving me the items and sending me into the red) is the most elegant way they can use the game mechanics to solve this problem.

The entire purpose of Margin Trading is that you gain the benefit of being able to leverage more cash than you actually have. If you have to keep the covering balance in your wallet at all times, for fear of going into the red, then the skill is pointless. So basically you want to break a very useful skill just so nobody will be able to play one of a thousand market games on you. Sounds worth it to me.



People play with markets like this all the time, with or without Margin Trading. Why, exactly, is it suddenly unfair if you employ a skill in the process? The bottom line is that, as a trader, absolutely nothing is certain. If you buy those widgets in X system and bring them back to sell in Y system, having seen a nice buy order that would yield you an easy profit, there's no rule saying that the buy order still needs to be up when you get back with the stuff.

When it comes to trading, opportunities are ephemeral. The only difference with the Margin Trading "scam" is that somebody figured out how to trigger that ephemerality on demand, exploiting the avaricious psychology of the average trader. In fact, that's one thing I find so strange about how people react to this "scam." They focus intently on the skill in question (Margin Trading), but completely ignore that it is primarily a psychological con-game, in that they present you with an outrageously aberrational deal--one which should immediately be seen as "too good to be true"--knowing that someone will fall for it, and then they can sweep the rug out from under the person's feet. If you don't take the bait, the "scam" never happens.



The way people talk about this "scam" often makes it sound as though they believe it to be an exploit. If you don't feel that way, then I'm sorry for implication.

Margin Trading Scam - A Guide
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=18942

Elegant fix, if a buy orders minimum qty cannot be fulfilled, color the order differently to indicate it to sellers. Maybe throw in a tooltip. This will help buyers avoid the penalty and encourage margin trading to be used as the safety net it was intended to be.

This will also inform newer players about this scenario because they will most likely see it at some point.

I think margin trading is important in its current form. Keep the mechanics the same... just add a little something so pilots can educate themselves prior to running into this.

I made a mistake earlier today, but if I had seen that the buyer didn't have the capital to fulfill and i tried to fulfill, I would have immediately realized the my error and avoided the confusion.