Market Discussions

So, I just resubbed in Jan after a hiatus right as Incarna came out, and after coming back, it seems like there's more 'trader's, in my trade Hub, (it's Not Jita). I seem to have more competition from 'large' orders, i.e not small orders from obvious 'non-professional traders', than I did before.

Is this my imagination? Or are perhaps there more traders playing the market?

Obviously theres not going to be hard numbers on, or a specific definition of who constitutes a 'Trader', but I think the general meaning is known.

This may be due to the increased population of EVE, but I'm thinking a higher percentage of players vs the EVE population are perhaps dabbling/getting into the Trader 'Profession'.

Is this totally imagined on my part, or is this perhaps the case? Again, I do tend to stay in one major trade hub, so my experience could be skewed from that.

Opinions?

Welcome to the self optimizing nature of markets.

You can't stop margins from thinning out and traders to increase, because that's the reason markets and traders exist.

What you can do is to find pieces of still not widely used knowledge to get an edge, adapt and overcome.

teaching newbies increases social status and demonstrates confidence in your own abilities.

I have this hypothesis.

There are different methods of trading. After some time the method a player is using reaches max. potential and the player moves on to another (less tedious) method.

Thus all the time people are joining your trading method, and leaving it for something else, possibly somewhere else.

No matter which trading method you use, there is always a niche for you.

If the advice given on these forums seriously hinders your trading.... then you're doing it wrong.

Trading probably has caught on more so in the last few years, for a few obvious reasons:

1. It's easy and intuitive at the most basic level; ie. buying things where the margin is good and re-listing them
2. It can be done with an eight day old alt nearly as well as an eight year old vet char. Beyond the basics of accounting and broker relations the biggest limiting factor is simply isk itself and that isn't hard to seed with a single GTC netting close to a bil. Remote trading, tons of orders, high standings for ultra-thin margin opportunities, and hauling alts are all nice-to-haves, but certainly not necessary to become proficient at basic trading.
3. It can be scaled up and down easily with a player's schedule.
4. Probably most important (and VV touched on this already): the margins are there to be exploited. There are a great many bittervet lazy regional traders out there who leave orders unattended for weeks if not months at a time. This leaves the door wide open for new traders to come in and offer a better deal to consumers, to come closer to the market's natural equilibrium.

I don't see a problem with this at all. Frankly I can't be asked to trade more than I already do just to try and stifle some young up-and-coming competition. Botters; however, are a different animal, and I make it a point to monitor and report them whenever possible. Fortunately I don't see a lot of them outside of Jita/Amarr and of the few I have successfully reported at least half a dozen were banned, or ceased to log in at the very least.