Trading

From BA Wiki

What Everyone Should Know

For players with no interest in the market, these two things are all that you need to know:

• How to place buy orders in advance for things that you know you'll need.
• How to place sell orders for loot that you don't want so that you get the most ISK out of it.

Assuming that you've made it through the tutorial, you probably have some hazy recollection of the market screen when you bought that single unit of ammo or something from a station somewhere and then had to fly out to get it. It's very possible that since then you've never opened the market window except to buy things as soon as you needed them. You've probably also been selling things by right-clicking on them and selling them for whatever price the game shows you. This is a very expensive way to live!

The Market Window is where you buy and sell most goods. Some items cannot be listed on the market and are sold via contract or on the forums. The market screen allows you to sort by the number of jumps from you an item is, the volume, cost, location and also if its a region, solar system or station buy/sell order. There is also an often over looked but very useful history tab, that will tell you the price and vol of an item over varying amounts of time. Use it. It can tell you if the price you are paying (or selling for) is on target, and just as importantly, how much of the item (volume, in sales) the item is moving. This is very useful in determining if you are in a busy area, with lots of competitors, or have the area to your self.

If you've played other games, you are probably used to NPC vendors who buy things from you at one price and who offer things for sale at another price. There are NPCs who buy and sell things on the Eve market, but the vast majority of the trades happen between players. When you right click on that module that you have no use for and click "sell" some other player buys it from you and then uses it or resells it to someone else, probably at a profit. When you buy something, another player was probably selling it, and for more than they bought it from some other player. This is nice for them, but not necessarily the best thing for you.

Buy and Sell Orders

The way that these other players are able to profit from your buying and selling is through buy and sell orders. These are standing orders to buy or sell a certain item at a certain price. Every single one of us gets the ability to place up to 4 buy or sell orders at once without training any skill. Even if you have no interest in trading or making ISK off the market you should be taking advantage of buy and sell orders.

Buy Orders

Take stock of your situation: are there certain consumables that you find yourself buying often? Ammo or drones for example. If there are, you should have a buy order up for this item.

• Set aside some ISK.
• Dock at your favorite station.
• Open up the market window, click on the search tab and type in a good chuck the name of the thing that you're using a lot of and hit "Search".
• Choose your item from the list. The market details will pop up next to the search box. It will look like a lot of numbers. Ignore them for now.
• Look for the part that says "Active Buy Orders" and then find the 'price' column. Click on that until it sorts the active buy orders by price from highest to lowest (this'll take one or two clicks, depending). The highest price on that list is probably lower than you are used to paying.
• Look for the button called "Place Buy Order" and click it. A window will pop up and there are a bunch of fields that you can fill in.

Choose the price that you want to pay (it should be lower than you are used to paying but higher than the highest active buy order), put in how many you want to get (for ammo, a big number is good here).

• Choose a range (that's how far you are willing to fly to pick it up - station is you want it to come to you - solar system to 2 jumps is what I suggest depending on how expensive the item is (I'll travel further for a new frigate than will for 100 Antimatter Charges).

For duration, always choose the maximum. If an order expires you lose your brokerage fee anyway and you can cancel at any time with no penalty beyond losing your broker's fee.

The game will calculate how much it'll cost you, the broker will tack on a fee and once you hit buy, the ISK will get taken out of your wallet and put in escrow (not to be confused with escrow missions). When some player right clicks on the 100 units of ammo that they didn't want and sells it, the ISK will come out of escrow and the ammo will come to you. The reason you chose a buy price slightly higher than everyone else's is because whoever has the highest buy order gets the goods.

With that done, you can go off and do some missions or take some classes or whatever you like to do while the broker buys up items on your behalf. You can keep track of where your items are located using the assets window. If you set your range wider than a single station, you'll find that your stuff is spread out all over the place. What I like to do is let things pile up for a bit and then every now and then, empty my cargo hold and do a quick collecting run to all the stations that have my items, fly them back to my home station and dump it all in my hangar.

You can monitor your buy order in your wallet window (check the orders tab). Sometimes you'll notice that your order isn't bringing in any items. This is probably from someone outbidding you.

• Bring up the market details on the item (use search or better yet, add the item to your market quickbar) and sort the buy orders from highest to lowest. If your order is not at the top of the list then you've been outbid.
• Check how many items the higher bidder wants. If it's a few, then you can probably wait it out. If it's a lot, then consider increasing your bid.
• Switch to the 'my orders' tab, right click on your buy order and choose 'modify order'. Put in a number that is higher than their bid and then click 'modify'. The broker will charge you another fee and the difference between your old bid and new bid will be deducted from your wallet.

If you are still the top bidder but you aren't getting any items, consider widening your range. Unfortunately, you'll need to put up a new bid to do this. You can cancel your old bid to get the ISK back (you'll lose the broker's fee though).

Sell Orders

If you are a mission runner, you probably have a lot of random loot lying around in your hangar, or you have been selling it as fast as you get it. If it's lying around, then you have lots of ISK locked up in junk you don't need. If you've been selling it immediately, you've probably been selling it for less than it's worth.

Sell orders work the same way as buy orders, except that instead of wanting to be the highest bidder, you want to be the lowest bidder so that your sale will be the most attractive).

• Right click on the item you want to sell, choose 'sell this item'. A window pops up.
• Click "Advanced" and click the Magnifying Glass
• Sort the sell orders by price from lowest to highest (opposite of buy orders sorting).
• Choose a duration (the max duration is the correct answer here).
• Choose a number that's lower than the lowest number (it's probably higher than the price you would have been paid). The game will calculate the price by multiplying the price by the number for sale and then subtracting sales tax and a broker's fee. IMPORTANT: With very cheap items (i.e. ammo), it is possible that the resulting ISK number will be LOWER than your 'immediate' sell price would have been. In this case, do not place the order. Either sell the item the non-advanced way or wait to collect more of the item and then sell them as a batch.

You can monitor your sell orders the same way as your buy orders and modify them as needed, if you find that your items aren't selling.

For players with no interest in the market, that should cover all that you need to generally save yourself some ISK and pay for that shiny cruiser faster than most people. However, some of you will find yourselves getting frustrated with having only 4 buy/sell orders available or will find yourselves eying the large gaps between the lowest sell orders and the highest buy orders... For those players, pick up some of the trading skills (Trading and Retail are a good start) and join me in Part Two.

Concepts of the Marketplace

The way to make ISK in the marketplace is by buying things for one price and then selling them for a higher price. Anyone can do this, the question is whether you can do it at a rate that makes it worth your time. What you want to do is set things up so that you are making more ISK through buying and selling than you would have made by doing something else during that same period of time. There is no point to spending fifteen minutes making a sale that nets you 1,000 ISK when you could have collected 50,000 ISK in mission rewards and bounties instead.

How much ISK you are making as a trader depends on a few different factors. How much ISK did you start with? How much profit are you making on that ISK? How often are you making that profit? How much effort does it take to turn that profit? As you make decisions about what trades to make and which trades to ignore, there are some concepts that you need to understand so that you can think like a trader.

Working Out Your Profits

To work out how much profit you are making on a sale, take the ISK you take in from a sale, subtract the cost to buy it and then divide the result by the cost to buy it. Multiply the result is by 100 to get the percentage profit.

(Sale Price - Buy Price)/Buy Price x 100 = Profit%

For example, say you buy chickens for 150ISK, and sell them for 200 ISK. You are making (200-150)/150 = 50/150 = 0.3333 = 33.3% profit. Well, almost. You have to also factor in brokerage fees (1% each way) and sales tax (1% on the sale). A good rule of thumb is to just get the profit and then subtract 3 from it. This isn't exact, but it's a good approximation. So our trader is really making around 30.3% profit on those chickens. Not bad.

Compound Profits and the Rule of 72

The nice thing about trading is that if you can avoid spending your profits, you can reinvest that ISK into more trades, earning even more ISK. Earning profits on your profits is a form of compound interest and it adds up very quickly. Imagine that you have 1,000 ISK and you are earning 10% profit on it every day. A week from now, you will spend all of your profits on candy for orphans. Trader B (your evil competitor) is making the same kinds of trades, but he is spending his profits on Exotic Dancers right away. After a week (7 days), let's compare the two of you.

You

Start: 1,000.00 ISK

Day 1: 1,100.00 ISK (1,000 + 100)

Day 2: 1,210.00 ISK (1100 + 110)

Day 3: 1,331.00 ISK (1,210 + 121)

Day 4: 1,464.10 ISK (you get the idea)

Day 5: 1,610.51 ISK

Day 6: 1771.56 ISK

Day 7: 1,948.72 ISK

Total profit: 948.72 ISK (94.9%)

Trader A

Start: 1,000 ISK

Day 1: 1,000 ISK +100 ISK of exotic dancers

Day 2: 1,000 ISK +200 ISK of exotic dancers

Day 3: 1,000 ISK +300 ISK of exotic dancers

Day 4: 1,000 ISK +400 ISK of exotic dancers

Day 5: 1,000 ISK +500 ISK of exotic dancers

Day 6: 1,000 ISK +600 ISK of exotic dancers

Day 7: 1,000 ISK +700 ISK of exotic dancers

Total Profit: 700 ISK (70%)

Thanks to your savings and reinvestments, you are now 248.2 ISK richer than trader A. In fact, by the time Trader A has 1,900 ISK, you will have 2,358 ISK. And when Trader A has reached 2,300ISK you will have reached 3,452 ISK. And when Trader catches up to 3,400 ISK (24 days from the start date) you will have 9,850 ISK!

A good rule of thumb for understanding compounding profits is the rule of 72. Take 72, divide it by the percentage profit you are making per unit of time (profit per day, per week, per month) and the result will be roughly how many units of time it will take to double your ISK. Using our candy for orphans example above, 72/(10% profit per day) = 7.2 Which is slightly over 7 days. The rule of 72 starts to break as your profit climbs past 25% but it still gives a good sense of how you're doing.

In other words, if you can earn a 10% profit every day in Eve (very easy) and resist touching any of that income, you will double your ISK every week.

Returns

As most of you know, R.O.I. stands for Return on Investment. However, your total return on investment isn't really indicative of much. Anyone can double their money, given enough time. Likewise, some trades make way more money but take way more playing time; other trades take very little time but may still be lucrative.

R.O.A.

Since any trader will have assets (in the form of unsold inventory, and later possibly in the form of ships, such as freighters) as well as cash, let's refer to ROI as ROA (Return on Assets) instead. ROA is still a deceptive term, however, since it doesn’t specify any certain time frame. Does your bank account earn you 1% interest per year, or per day? It's important to specify these things--consequently, let us use ROA/day as our unit of measurement. The higher your ROA per day is, the better you are doing. As an example, a 10% ROA/day is much better than a 50% ROA that takes a full week to earn.

R.O.T.

As I alluded to earlier, however, ROA/day is only one side of the equation; the other side is ROT (Return on Time). How much play-time does it take you to net a certain ROA/day? If you have infinite amounts of time, low ROT but high ROA/day trades are good (say you can make 20% ROA/day, but it takes 18 hours of constant game play to do it). For people with limited time, however, ROT makes a big difference. Personally I’d rather have a lower ROA/day and not be chained to my computer all day. I love the game, but from time to time I do like to go outside and bask in the rays of the great-yellow-ball-above.

Don’t worry about how many isk per day you make. Focus on your daily percentage gain. But beware of your Return on Time—if two trading opportunities generate about the same ROA/day but one requires a lot less time to do, then that is the one you should focus on.

Speed Up Your Earnings

As I said at the start, trading on the market is only really worth it if you are making ISK faster than if you were running a mission or mining or what-have-you. There are four main ways that you can do this. The first two are covered by the rule of 72. Increase the profit or increase the rate of turnover to shorten the time between your ISK doubling. You'll need to play around with finding a balance between sheer profits and the rate. Someone who is able to make 10% profit every half day will double their ISK every 3.6 days. Someone who is making 15% profit but only every day will double their ISK in 4.8 days. Sometimes it's better to make less profit faster.

The last two considerations are how much ISK you have to invest in trading (doubling 1,000 ISK is not nearly as impressive as doubling 10,000,000 ISK) and how much babysitting you have to do to keep the ISK flowing. For the babysitting this all depends on how much time you want to spend staring at market data and how much time you are willing to spend hauling things between stations. That's really up to personal choice, but for me, I'd rather be out running missions or defending the Pill than hauling Civilian Afterburners 13 jumps.

The second nicest thing about trading (after compound profits) is that you can do it while you are doing other things. After you go to a station and set up a bunch of buy and sell orders you can leave and do a second activity and watch the ISK flow in from two sources at once. You'll be out in the asteroid fields, blowing up Veldspar and your broker will be busy buying and selling on your behalf. Let me tell you, it's very satisfying to have your wallet button blinking constantly, no matter what you are doing, as the ISK pours into your account.

Trade Practice

There are a lot of good trading threads in the Eve Official forums, but they all seem to give the impression that the people doing the trading are starting with enormous bankrolls. This is super intimidating if you are new like me. The other big problem with learning to trade is that everyone avoids saying where they are making their ISK for fear that there will be an enormous influx of competition and the market in that item will crash. The related problem is that there are a LOT of items for sale in Eve and it's very, very confusing if you're new. Browsing the market is an exercise in frustration as most items are out of your price range when you're getting started (heck, a frigate probably seems expensive). On top of that, you don't have much in the way of ISK to spare.

New Player Strategy

As a new player you will be working for others until you build up enough money to start your own business. There are three main routes new traders follow to build up enough money: mining in safe empire space, running missions for agents, and trading "Trade Goods".

In the market window, the category named Trade Goods that is filled with items that NPC corporations buy and sell. Earning money this way is very simple, as all you have to do is buy low and sell high. There is a severe imbalance built into the system so it is easy to make money this way. Of course, the volume is limited so that more experienced players don't spend the rest of the game running Trade Goods back and forth.

After you have found a few low cost trade runs and before you set out, there are some things you must ask yourself first.

• Is your cargo full? If not, you should look again and see if theres a close (in destination) system that requires something you can bring as well. This must be balanced with the time it takes you both to deliver (and pickup) this "filler" load.
• Is there a return trip load? In the trucking industry, drivers carrying cargo to one destination only to find nothing to carry on the return trip are called "Deadheads". This costs you both money, and time. Avoid this at all cost. Sometimes you can't, but you should try.
• Are you using the right equipment? If you have found a run that has somewhat high priced items, taking just a few hundred cargo it may be better to run that fast frig twice, rather then the big slow industrial once. Remember the return trip though. Time is money.
• Are you running into low security systems? In the beginning I'd avoid this. While some juicy runs are in < 0.5, you are not the only person thats going to be there, plenty of pirates know how to use the trade system to find riches too. Be aware of this, and if you must run there, set up insta-jumps first. And use the map.; check the ships/pods destroyed in the last hour setting. If theres been any activity, don't go, its that simple. You have been warned.

Note: On the surface some Trade Goods look extremely lucrative to trade, but a closer examination reveals this is not always the case. Items in EVE have varying volume and knowing how "big" something is can go along way to deciding if its profitable to carry. The bottom line, is you are selling your ships cargo bay, for as much as you can. Take for example construction blocks. This "type" of commodity is newbie bait if there ever was one. At first glance you might see a buy order for 700 ISK somewhere nearby and quickly dash off to buy those blocks in your station for 600 ISK. Good deal? Nope.. Because each block has a vol of 4, which translates to 1/4 of the amount you can carry(capacity) per run. Remember you are selling your cargo cap, so those oh-so-lucrative looking CB's now have a "cargo point per ISK ratio of 25", not 100. Conversely, take for example the antibotics. These only have .5 vol, and usually only make 18-36 ISK per unit. BUT, you can carry two, per "cargo point" which equates to 36-72 ISK per cargo point. Much better then those old Construction blocks, wouldn't you agree?

Note: The market supply and demand changes with every buy and sell order processed. When you sell something to an NPC the demand price "usually" goes down, as the orders are filled. And the buy price goes up as more is purchased. The temptation is to deliver and sell, deliver and sell, completing the demand at a station, but doing this will leave some profit behind, as the price changes with every transaction, "most of the time". So get it all there first, and sell it together, buy the same way, all at once.

New Player Strategy 2

Run combat missions (Security or Internal Security agents give a lot of these) and collect all of the loot. This means that you'll have to train up some combat skills but in my opinion it's totally worth it. Level 1 missions are generally very easy, they give you a steady flow of income (rewards +bounties) and a lot of research material. Find yourself a level 1 Security or Internal Security agent that's in a populous system (I've had a lot of luck in Oursulaert and, when I moved to Eve-U, Jita) blow up pirates and open every single loot can and haul whatever is inside it home.

After a few missions, you will have a hangar full of stuff that you don't want and some ISK set aside. The ISK is for making your first buy orders (you need to buy something in order to sell stuff). The reason you've been hoarding all of this stuff is that loot from level 1 missions is probably in your price range. It forms your first set of sales leads.

Figuring Out What to Trade: Healing the Market

Pick an item at random, ammo is a good place to start. Right click on it, and select "View Market Details" order the sell orders from lowest to highest and the buy orders from highest to lowest. In my opinion, this should be your default view of market details. What you are looking for is the percentage difference between the lowest sell order and the highest buy order ((sell minus buy)/buy). I am willing to bet if you are looking at random ammo that you looted, that this percentage is a very big number. If it's not, ignore it for now and move on to the next item in your hangar. Eventually, you will find something where the highest buy price is far below the lowest sell price. Big gaps between buy and sell orders is a indication of a place where the Market is broken.

When I say that the market is broken, what I mean is that there is no clear agreement on the value of an item (how can a small shield booster be worth both 200 ISK and 5,000 ISK in the same place?). The Market wants to things to be bought and sold for more or less the same price. When you find a huge discrepancy between buy and sell orders (and you will) this means that someone is making insane profits at the expense of both the people selling to that person and the people buying from that person. As a trader, it is practically your duty to close that gap and bring the market to balance. The way you do this is simple: Place a buy order that is noticeably higher than the highest buy order and then when you have a bunch of the item, sell it for noticeably lower than the lowest sell order. This will have the effect of narrowing the gap (reducing profits) but you will be rewarded by being the one who buys and sells the most orders. If all goes smoothly, you will soon find yourself with a pair of open buy and sell orders with some percentage profit (15%-50% is a good amount - remember to subtract the broker fees and taxes!) between them. As your buy order gets used up, you will place a new one and the same for your sell order. It's not uncommon to look at your transactions and see right on top of each other two of the same item, one bought and one sold from two different people. Those people could have sold directly to each other but instead the item went through you and the difference between those prices went straight into your pocket!

The reason I suggest that you take a look at ammo first is that there are a lot of players like you who are going on missions and coming home with 100 charges of something-they-don't-use. Because ammo is so cheap, it's not worth putting up a sell order for it (the broker's fee often completely wipes out any benefit of putting up the order). So other traders will put up a buy order for some tiny price and catch hundreds of players' 100 ammo sales and then resell the ammo for 5 or even 10 times that amount. If you swoop in and buy the ammo for twice as much as the highest buy and half the lowest sell you will often still be making 100% profit on your trades. Yet you're doing everyone a service! The sellers aren't being completely ripped off and the buyers are getting better deals. Of course, this probably won't make the player with the buy and sell orders that you're ducking between very happy.

Trading is PvP

If you can stay as the highest buyer and lowest seller, you will become the only person in your area that is buying or selling that particular item (to what extent you will dominate your area depends on how far you are willing to travel to pick up your items and how many stations you are willing to put up sell orders in - on low ticket items people can be very lazy about getting good deals). If you dominate, don't expect the other traders to take this lying down. They'll fight you the only way they can - price increases on buy orders and price drops on sell orders.

You have two basic strategies for dealing with this. 1) Modify your orders to respond. 2) Get out of the market.

I strongly suggest option 1 - it's more fun!. If someone is buying for more than you or selling for less, this is a signal from the market that your prices are wrong. What you want to do is readjust your prices until the other trader decides that it's not worth it and moves on to some other item. Sometimes you will experience competition from only one direction, this is a signal from the market that you need to move your prices up or down. This is why I suggested leaving a big gap between the your prices and the ones you are beating. It gives you room to adjust up or down as needed. Other times you will get competition from both directions. This probably means that you were trying to earn too big a profit and some other hungry trader spotted a chance to beat you. Narrow your profit margin.

Buy Orders

Everyone who has tried our profession knows there is one amazingly annoying thing about it: you put in a perfectly good buy order, and someone comes along and puts in an order for .01 isk more than yours. Consequently, when someone sells an item, it goes to the other guy. Really gets on your nerves after awhile! How do you combat this? By sitting at the computer and checking in every 30 minutes? Nah, that’s no fun! The answer is actually remarkably simple: be fair and reasonable.

Let’s say you put in a buy order for chocolate covered peanuts (which are much coveted in Rens); you put in a buy order for 100 chocolate covered peanuts for 1000 isk each. Of course, they are selling for 2000 isk each, so that’s a good profit you have going…if you can get anyone to sell them. Instead of trying to low-ball people, make a reasonable buy offer. My general ballpark is 10-20% below the cheapest sell order. This does two things: first of all, other sellers will often decline to pay so much more than they wanted to for the product. Sure, someone else was willing to buy the chocolate covered peanuts for 1000.01 isk each, but the same person will see that you have an order up for 1600 isk each and may decide that profit margin isn’t enough for them. Secondly, if a region has low-ball buy orders, many people will either put up their own sell order, or will go to another region.

Quantity, Not Quality

That sounds reversed, doesn’t it? It’s true, however. You should be interested in quick, reliable, low-profit turnover. I would much rather sell 10 items each day for 100,000 isk than sell one item a week for 5m isk. Focus on high-volume, low-profit-margin markets, and you will generally have a much higher ROA/day than someone who spends weeks and months looking for that one magical billion isk trade.

I’m reminded of the story of the kid selling pencils for a million dollars each. Someone came up to him and told him that it was unlikely that he would sell many pencils at that price. The youngster looked up at him, and honestly said “But mister, all it takes is one.” Sadly, however, that one never comes—or takes forever to come—while the kid down the street is raking in money hand-over-fist by selling pencils at a 15% markup.

Expand Your Empire

Selling small ticket items can be very profitable and educational, but eventually you will reach a saturation point where your orders aren't getting filled fast enough. The optimal size of a buy or sell order is for an amount of items that will get filled 1 second before the next time you sit down at the station to check on your active orders. If you put up 10 Warp Scramblers for sale and the tenth is sold just as you dock, that's perfect. If you put up 10 and they sell out a day before you check on them, that's a day that someone else has been selling Warp Scramblers instead of you. If you put up 10 and come back to find 5, then that's 5 Warp Scrambler's worth of ISK that could have been invested in something else.

You'll never reach this perfect balance of buying and selling, but you will find yourself at times either selling items faster than you can buy them or buying them faster than you can sell. If things are selling to fast, consider raising your buy price to encourage more people to sell to you (the higher your buy price and the tighter your margins, the less people will be tempted to put up their own sell order for the item instead of selling through you). If things are selling too slow consider lowering your sell prices to make your items more attractive. If your buy AND sell orders are moving slowly, then you probably have too much ISK invested in that one item and it's time to look at diversifying into more markets. Go through your hangar of loot for more leads or try looking at the variations tab for items that you are already selling.

Don’t Be Afraid to Come in Second

Sometimes you’ll see someone with a ridiculously high buy order that virtually eliminates any chance of that person making a profit. However, if you have the money, I would recommend putting in a more reasonable “second place” offer—one that will put your order as the 2nd highest. That way when someone does sell to his order, you will then be the highest buy order in the region.

Sell Orders

Price your item 1-3% below the lowest sell price for the region in order to maintain a constant roll-over of items. Tweak it some—if you are getting 10 of one item in per day, make sure you sell 10 of that item. If you can sell all 10 for 100% of the lowest sell price, then do it. If you have to offer a 2-3% discount, then do that. Remember, any cash you have tied up in assets is cash that you cannot use to buy MORE assets. Buy fast, sell fast.

Numbers vs. Percent

Don't obsess over squeezing every isk of profit out of an item. Focus instead on your fast turnover and high ROA/day. Would you rather buy something for 180m isk and spend a week trying to sell it for 205m isk, or would you rather sell it within the first 24 hours for a "mere" 200m isk? If you wait to get the extra few million isk, it could mean tying up your capital for days or weeks. Instead, your goal should be to free your capital within 24 hours, if possible. The faster your item sells at a modest profit, the faster you can buy another item which will sell for a similar profit.

When you are deciding where to locate your main hangar, I suggest two things. First, find the most populous system in your region (or consider moving to a region with a very populous system) then in that system, pay attention to where the buy and sell orders come from. A lot of them will come from the same station. I highly suggest relocating to that single station. If most of the buy and sell orders are located there, then most of your business will happen there. I find that I will often put up a buy order for 50 items with a 2 jump range and that 45 of those items will get sold to me from within a single station with the other 5 spread out all over the place.

Advanced Strategies

Know Your Region

Knowledge is power. Knowing what trades, what doesn't, and the supply and demand of your chosen area will either make you or break you. Take the time to research your local solar system, (and surrounding areas) and see what is sold, consistently, in your operating area. Learn the prices, both buying and selling. Take notes of both the prices AND the volume supplied and bought. There is a big "gotcha" here. Many of times you may find a trade good that buys low and sells high, reasonably close, seemingly a great run. But, if the supplier(or demander) only needs 176 of that item, while the supplier has 157k for sale,(or vice-versa) does not make this a worthwhile trip.

The Importance of Full Regional Range

If at all possible, put your buy orders at full regional range. If you are selling all your stuff in the same region you buy it in, get Marketing up to 4 and it’ll allow you to generate sell orders up to 20 hops away (instead of you having to go there to place the order, you can place it remotely; note that the buyer still has to come to the station the item is at in order to pick up, though they can buy it from anywhere in the region). I see many people making the mistake of putting in competitive buy orders…with a range of one or two jumps! The idea of a trader is to dominate a whole region (or several regions), not to dominate a handful of systems.

When I advise you to set all buy orders for full regional range, I also advise you to do this only in empire space. Granted that there are some lowsec systems in empire space, and I admit that I was terrified at the chance of accidentally buying something in lowsec and losing money on it. However, in twelve day I have only had a buy order fulfilled in lowsec twice. The first time I sold it remotely to the highest regional buy order, the second time I put up a sell order 5% above my purchase price. In the first case I lost about 5%, in the second case I made a profit of about 3% (after fees).

Get Organized

Soon you will find yourself with a variety of different items for sale, with buy and sell orders ending at all different times and stuff spread out across a variety of stations. The first thing you should do when you stop being able to remember all of the items that you're buying and selling it start taking notes using the in game note pad. I suggest noting down the name of the item and your buy and sell price. As you adjust your prices, note the changes in there (leaving a history of price shifts).

For example here are my notes for Warp Core Stabilizers:

"Warp Core Stabilizer 2200 3200 now 2200 4900 now 2500 3900 now 2600 3900 now 2700 3900"

You can also leave yourself other notes: items to look into, prices in different regions if you travel, notes about planned prices. It's very useful to be able to log in, find a hangar full of Rail Guns you don't remember buying and to check your notes and see what you were planning to do with them.

You should also consider using cargo containers. You can buy them on the market and you will sometimes get them as rewards for missions as well. Assembled containers can be named and I like to use them to separate out items I intend to keep from items for sale as well as separating out high, med and low slot items and ammo for when I'm fitting ships. I leave the main hangar for stuff I'm buying and selling (that's where it ends up by default) and use the containers to organize everything else.

NPC Trade Goods

Lets say you find a good deal on antibiotics. But, they are wanting over 100k of them, and you find yourself looking at 17 different stations selling just 8k vol each. Do you spend a day flying around and gathering them all to one station? You could, but chances are someone will beat you to it, or at least part of them, dropping the buy price by the time you get them all there. What to do? Stockpile. Don't sell them for less just gather them. The market rises and falls with every order filled, remember, so they will go back up and you can still make the money you intended. With the marketing skill you can login in a day or so, check the market, and if your number is met, just open assets and click sell. Assuming you are in range (level dependent) you never have to undock.

Courier Contracts

Building on the above you can take it a step further. Pay people to haul those scattered assets for you! Set up courier missions (you must be in target station unfortunately) and pay those young industrial haulers just a bit of your profits to move your stuff for you. Now you are saving tons of time to do other things, make the "commissions" back that you pay for this service, or whatever. Point is you have others doing you hauling for you, and you just sell it when it arrives. You must be in a good position cash wise, and be prepared to wait for your orders to arrive, but for those with a lot of cash and better things to do with their time, this is a viable option.

Mineral Trading

Minerals, the life blood of all production corps. Volumes could be written on trading minerals. Some regions don't have access to noxcium, others have problems finding Isogen. Learn what is in demand and the current prices. And stay current. Mineral prices rise and fall like a nun in a cucumber patch, so just because you sold iso one day at 100 doesn't mean you can do it a week from now, or tomorrow. Mineral trading takes a lot of effort and time (research) but the rewards are huge.

Mineral Compression

If you're planning to build things in 0.0, you'll need to compress your minerals to something easily movable.

• Passive targets are 5m3 and reprocess for 125m3 of tritanium (1/25 ratio)
• Small Tractor Beams are 10m3 and reprocess for 100k Tritanium, 25k Pyerite, 9k Mexallon, 2,5k isogen, 350 Nocxium, 20 Zydrine, 40 Megacyte (1/136 ratio)
• Jump Portal Generators are 1 000m3 and reprocess for 31,937M Tritanium, 7,500M Pyerite, 2,924M Mexallon, 459,84k Isogen, 144,5k Nocxium, 23k Zydrine, 10,26k Megacyte (1/429 ratio)

A single Jump Portal Generator is enough to build 4 Megathron once reprocessed if you add a few zydrine, but you'll need a high ME BPO.

Module trading

This I liken to specialty trading, a niche market, taking even more research and time to effectively manage. Some modules can cost millions and millions for just one item. For those brave enough, with enough cash, this is probably the highest tier of trading in EVE. Its not for the faint of heart. As of this writing I have yet to dabble in this and I have a sizable bankroll. While the rewards are great, the risk is even greater.

Tech II trading (50 to 300M profit each day)

It's quite easy, you need a transport ship or even better a freighter alt, and a trading alt (list of the trading alt with starter characters skills are available on my mineral trading post) First you need to put the transport character in Jita, and the trade alt in any secondary hub you'll find fitting (Rens being the best in my opinion, Oursulaert, Amarr, and Agil are nice too, but you can find your own little trading heaven by yourself, i never went out of Rens the money was good here, around 200M each day)

Then, open the market with both characters (you need two accounts if you don't want to kill yourself for the next step), and search for " II". It will bring up a list of all tech II modules, after that you need to compare the prices of every popular tech II module, to ensure steady income the module you're buying in Jita need to have a volume of trading higher than 3 or 4 each day in the TARGETED REGION, this is not really necessary but it will help avoiding modules that won't sell, the longer it takes to sell, the longer your money is immobilized.

If you ve got enough orders, buy anything which has a 10% margin or 200k margin at least between two regions, this may not sound a lot, but when you’re selling 50 modules selling 20 times a day with 200k margin, you end up with 200M profit at the end of the day.

Be careful with high value modules, try to make at least 3 or 4% profit as the transaction taxe + broker fees will be quite high, this won’t be a 10% margin, but it will probably be 500k rough isk benefit.

Don’t use industrial ships to transport your goods from Jita to the trade hub you’re selling in, you’ll be eaten alive by evil pirate using suicide ravens. You can use an hardened cruiser or battlecruiser at the beginning if you don’t have a transport ship, tech II goods fit well even if you don’t have that much cargo. If you’ve got a freighter, you can also trade tech II ships, feel free to explore other kind of items.

Empire Mission hubs

I used to do this to begin making money, basically find any mission hub by checking which agents are in fighting divisions with level 4 quality 10+ , and check the map to see if there are more than 50 or 100 people here. You can make a lot of money by selling ammos, by buying mineral to sell it in Jita (you need a freighter for this if you start buying trit/pyerite/mexa, you can handle it without it if you’re only buying rare minerals) Use these systems to sell a few tech II modules too, armor and shield hardeners, tech II drones. A nice gold mine is the Kernite, people need it for a level 4 storyline which give a +4 implant and will buy the 8000 units needed as long as they can make a decent profit on the implant without having to mine or haul anything.

0.0 Mission Hubs

The Kernite trick works in some of the 0.0 missions hubs pretty well, but you’ll need a carrier with a fully expanded impel + fully expanded prorator (or any other industrial ship you can fit) to transport the kernite, and you’ll need several carrier jumps. Is it worth it ? I guess it speaks for itself. You can even buy the Kernite in the low sec system you’ll be using to jump, put a buy order for 600 ISK or something like that and it will fill within two or three days, and you’ll still make an insane profit of it. As long as the 8 000 Kernite needed for the +4 implant storyline is cheaper than the price of this implant, people will buy it because they need the faction standing boost to get their uber Rattlesnake BPC. Also works with drugs, but not that much.

You can also trade a lot of other things in 0.0 hubs, use only mission running 0.0 hubs because you don’t need standings to dock here, and everybody can access them, same as empire hubs try to aim for the most populated one, use an alt to scout the region and what’s the most popular station if you don’t have a clue, but it’s not always the best place to sell.

• Ammunitions, people usually forget to bring their BPOs, bring antimatter L/M BPOs, Cruise Missiles BPOs, Torpedoes BPOs (or BPCs, they’re not used that much), and try to product and sell them in the station where all the mission carebears hide, it should sell for a decent profit and you won’t have too much competition to watch for, it’s basically 30 minutes of work at the beginning for 1 month afk profit. Tech I drones are nice too.
• Anything you can fit on a Raven running missions (be careful with Cruise Missile Launcher II tho, it’s quite a huge investment and you’re not sure they will sell fast), tech II drones, power diagnostic systems, ballistic control systems, etc ...
• Anything else people in 0.0 running missions may need, just figure it out yourself i can’t think of everything for you :(

Trading Skills

Buy low cost and high demand skills, and haul them in 0.0, pick 20 or 25 skills “popular” skills, buy them in empire, haul them in 0.0 with a shuttle, sell them here. You’ll be able to fill orders of two regions on a trade alt (53 orders available most of the time), and it will be a nice afk profit too as long as you’re not selling at a too high prices, but don’t sell too low. Works quite nice atm with all the new rigs and salvage skills, but also works with some secondary gunnery/missile/navigation/engineering/electronics skills too, just make a choice.

Rigs

Buy the bpos, and make them by buying the components on the market, sometimes you'll be able to make 10M profit just to run the production of a rig even if you bought all the components in Jita. There's also an obvious market of buy orders for rigs components you could set up in mission hubs.

Black market trading

Contraband. Ilegal stuff. I don't do this. I value my corporate standings too much to risk getting caught (and my wallet size) and its still so new I can't speak with authority on any of the methods and risks associated with it. There are others out there that do, and some have written up tidbits to this end, but you won't find this info from me. Seek out others if you wish to travel this route.

Skills

The skill sets required for trading are both many and diverse. While not as involved as a combat or mining profession, the time investment is substantial none the less. You begin with very limited access to the higher tiered skills (as opposed to the other professions), but they can be quickly gained with just a bit of effort. With a bit of research, you can create a character that has a "leg up" on these basic skills, which gives you room to grow quickly. Now, some will argue that the learning skills (learning, and the 5 basic "brain power" skills should be in here as well. And I do agree, however, to begin trading, and thats what we are covering here, they are not "necessary". They should be gained though, as quickly as time(and money) allows. Saving you tons of time later when you train the higher tiered skills you will be wanting.

Navigation

A must have, for the large base of higher tier skills, promoting speed, handling, and economy of flight. The Navigation sets, with the afterburner, MWD and handling are critical.

Mechanic

Another must have, allowing modification of ship modules, and adding increased cargo capability.

Frigate, Industrial

Based on the ship of choice, most often on the race you started with. The Starship skills you have chosen should meet the goals you have set for the types of delivery ships you wish to use. I trained up to Industrial I but honestly have had very little use for a big hauler. I find that for the most part when you are dealing in modules and ammo that you don't need that much cargo hold. A decent frigate with a big cargo hold, some cargo expanders and an afterburner will be what you use most of the time to collect things from neighboring stations and systems. However when trading in ammo, minerals, or especially ships you will need the largest ship available.

Trade, Retail, Wholesale, Tycoon

What is trading in EvE? "Trading" is selling your market slots for a profit. For example lets say you're hauling in to Jita from say Aradia with items for sale. Without trade 1 you can place up to 5 five standing sell orders and no standing buy orders. Now lets say you have six items for sale, what are you going to do? Sell one to a reseller. The reseller will then turn around and sell the item to a third person. Don't want to mess with selling in Jita, again a reseller will pay you for the item and then sell it along.

How much sense does it make to fill a sell order on the market. Well it depends. Lets take for Example Type SS Cargo Expanders in Jita. Last time I checked there were standing buy orders of 12m and standing sell orders for 14m a 15% profit margin. Now lets look at Cargo Expander I, buy orders for 300isk sells for 8400isk or 2800% profit margin. Why would anybody want to get into Type SS when they could buy and sell Cargo Expander I? Market volume. You can't sell enough Cargo Expander I's in one day to equal the profit you could make in the same time selling Type SS. Now there's one more thing, once you are buying and selling Type SS having more trade slots buying and selling Type SS is unlikely to increase your profits (unless you're trying some kind of market manipulation). So why not get into Cargo Expander I's? What this means, the more trade slots you have the more money you have the POTENTIAL to make (margin trading comes in handy hear).

Accounting

Easy enough... it reduces your sell taxes. Pretty straightforward, huh? Every time you sell something, SCC gets 1% of the sell order total value… per level, you get a 0.1% reduction (you pay 0.9% at lvl1, 0.8% at lvl2... up to 0.5% at lvl5).You will see the % you pay under “transaction tax” on your “orders” screen.

Broker relations

Almost as straightforward… Almost. Each time you put an order (be it buy or sell), you pay 1% to this bloodsuckers. Every level of the skill reduces the amount per 0.05% (so, 0.95% at level 1, 0.9% at level 2…) You will see the % on “Base Broker fee” on the “order” tab. Bear in mind though:

• You pay the bloodsuckers every time you set up an order. If you cancel the order, you don’t get yer Isk back mkay? (the sell tax is only paid when you actually do the sell)

• If you are a trader (you are a trader, right? ‘cos, like, you are reading this!), remember you pay these bloody bloodsuckers TWICE every time you move an item: when you set up your purchase order, and when you set up your sell order!

• You DON’T pay if you buy or sell directly (as in, without setting up a purchase order).

Example 1: I go to the market, directly buy gizmo for 100 Isk, and then set up a sell order for 200 Isk (and they call themselves pirates because they blow up stuff… heh)

• When buying, you pay no tax nor broker fee

• When setting up the sell order, you pay the broker fee (2 Isk if no skill, reduced with Broker Relations)

• When and if you sell, you pay the SCC tax (2 Isk if no skill, reduced with accounting, which is to say you receive 198 Isk when the sell is completed)

Example 2: I set up a purchase order, buy gizmo for 100 Isk, then set up a sell order for 200 Isk.

• When setting up purchase order, you pay the broker fee (1 Isk if no skill, reduced with Broker Relations, so you gotta have 101 Isk in your hand).

• When setting up the sell order, you pay the broker fee AGAIN (2 Isk if no skill, reduced with Broker Relations).

• When and if you sell, you pay the SCC tax (2 Isk if no skill, reduced with accounting, so you get 198 Isk when the sell is completed)

And remember… Broker relations influence your BASE broker fee. It is also influenced by your standing towards the Faction that controls the station where you set the order (ain’t got numbers, I ain’t no runner so my standings are crap)

Another thing: this lazy bastards don't lift a finger for less than 100 Isk. Good for them, me neither... and it means that if you actually enter an order for, say 1200 isk, the fee will not be 12 isk but 100 isk. If you try the above examples in practice, for a 100 isk order the dude will charge you another 100 isk. Cookie goes to Theron Gyrow for his outstanding perception on the matter.

(Of course... what kind of cheap jerk wastes a perfectly good order for less than 10.000 isk? Don't do it. I'm serious. Orders for less than 50.000 isk make baby Oveur cry, and all the other traders will laugh at you. I mean it!)

Daytrading

Daytrading is one of the most convenient skills in the game. With daytrading, you can modify any order remotely, as long as it is in the same region as you, and as long as it is within range (at daytrading 5 you have full regional range). You need to go pick stuff up and haul it around but want to be able to raise the price on your buy orders (or lower the price on your sell orders) the instant someone changes theirs, without having to cross the region and go back to the station your order is in? Use daytrading! By allowing you to modify orders when you are across the region, it saves you the time of going back to your home base, and it allows you to update your orders as needed, in real time.

Margin Trading

This is some commonly overlooked cool stuff. When you set up a purchase order, you gotta put your money into escrow. They kinda don’t trust you, mkay? But with margin trading, the amount of money you pay “up front” is reduced. Cool thing to free your cash flow!

Example 3: I set a purchase order to buy gizmo for 100 Isk. I have no Margin Trading; I gotta pay… how much?

Whoever said “100 Isk”, please go sit by the belt or the gate… those that said “101 Isk” can stay, those that said “100 plus broker fee” I will have to kill you ‘cos you are too damn smart for your own good, and my profits.

But: if I have Margin Trading up to level 1 (25% reduction) then:

• I pay up front the bloodsucker’s commission (the commission calculated for the full 100 Isk)
• I pay up front 75 Isk.
• When and if I buy the item, I pay the other 25 Isk.

Attention!

• Each level “multiplies” the previous by 0.75, mkay? So,
• No skill 100%
• Lvl 1 75%
• Lvl 2 56,25% (NOT 50%)

So yes… if you have 76 ISK you can enter a purchase order for 100Isk… if it gets filled, SOMEBODY will have to pay the other 25 Isk, and SOMEBODY better have the money by then ‘cos all sort of bad things would happen to SOMEBODY if not [Never tested it myself, word is your orders get canceled and you lose the broker's fee. Thanks Lacero!]

You cannot see this %, but you can see the “Total in Escrow” (what you have already paid up front) and the “additional Isk to cover” on the “order” screen.

Markets with incredibly low volumes generally have very high margins and can be exceedingly profitable with Margin Trading 4 (Margin4 for short).

Consider six different types of items (armor hardeners, shield boosters, whatever you like), called A, B, C, D, E, and F. Now A, B, C, D, E, and F all have a profit margin of 100m credits per item (let's say the highest buy order is 100m and the lowest sell order is 200m, which gives us an incredible margin!). Unfortunately, all six items are very low volume items, generally only trading a couple times per week.

Equally unfortunate is that you only have 300m credits. That means you can put in a buy order for one A, one B, and one C, but if a D, E, or F comes up for sale, you won't be competing in those markets, so you'll miss the potential profit. Let's say that, on average, with three buy orders (one for A, one for B, and one for C) you, on average, are able to purchase ONE item of either A, B, or C per week. Assuming you turn around and resell it for 200m fairly quickly, you make about 100m per week. Cool!

But what if you have Margin2 and only have to pay half the escrow up front on buy orders (actually 56.25% if I recall correctly, but this example will be a little simplified). Now you can take your 300m credits and put down SIX buy orders, say one for A, one for B, one for C, one for D, one for E, and one for F. Now, since you doubled your number of buy orders, you'll get TWO items of either A, B, C, D, E, or F per week (for the sake of this example, in real life it isn't guaranteed, of course). Thus you have made 200m this week rather than only 100m because you spent the same number of isk paying escrow on twice as many items.

Marketing

Self descriptive AND IT WORKS JUST FINE KIDS. It does. You have an item 5 jumps away AND IN THE SAME REGION, RIGHT? you can sell it with marketing lvl2. You can see the distance under “Ask Range”

Procurement

Almost self descriptive… you can set a remote purchase order in another station with this skill. You can see how far under “Bid Range”. Two small details:

• You can only set a purchase order for items actually on sale. I mean, if you dock your ship and open the market tab, you can set a purchase order for ANYTHING that exists on the market, even if said item is not currently being sold anywhere in your region. But if you want to put a purchase order of that item in a station 10 jumps away, you will need Procurement lvl3 AND THE ITEM HAS TO BE BEING SOLD AT SAID STATION. (if somebody knows it different give me a holler)

• When you put a purchase order in the station you are in, you can set the range of effect to anything from “station” to “region”. You need no skill for this. But when you set a remote purchase order you need:

Visibility

Remember the purchase order at the station you are docked? You can set any range you want… with a remote purchase order and no visibility, you can only set the range to “station”. Train this up, you can increase the range. Voila.

[NOTE: Before the 'Blood' patch, the skill had a wrong description; you may find people that, based in that old description, say that you need Visibility for your orders to be seen on the 'Buy' window. Nope, you can see all orders; this skill only affects the effect range]

You will your range at the “Remote bid range”

DON’T GET’EM MIXED UP: “Bid range” is for placing the remote purchase order, and it gives you the max distance between the system you are in, and the system you are placing the purchase order (and you increase it with “Procurement”). The range of your remote purchase order is your “Remote bid range” (and you increase it with “Visibility”)

Equipment

In the beginning, you will undoubtedly be limited both in skill and cash, to the most basic of equipment. A fast frig, some cargo expanders and maybe an afterburner or microwarp drive. But fear not, this will change quickly. As cash flows in, you can upgrade to more skills, and better ships (more cargo) and higher worth trade goods.

A lot can be said here on the "best" gear to have, but its an area I choose to leave to you to sort out. The most important items I'd say are speed and cargo capacity. Pick an industrial you wish to fly and train the skill, and buy one. Ask around. Most industrial pilots love talking about there ships, as do most other pilots.

Some times an Indy or Frig does not fit the bill either. A lot of successful traders fly various types of cruisers, destroyers or even interceptors. Each has their usefulness, but most beginning traders have little spare time to train these skills or the cash to buy them, much less the ships themselves. Point is, be aware that later in your career you may (or should) be looking at other ship options for some runs.

Upgrades, Upgrades, Upgrades!

Price better cargo expanders and buy them if you can afford them. Buy them one at a time, if you must, but get more cargo capability. Remember you are selling your cargo space, and if by expanding your cargo, you can shorten the number of trips you make per run, then do it. Also, buy some giant secure containers, as many as you can fit in your hold. They can be a "poor mans expander" if you get them cheaply enough. All cargo containers have the special ability that allows you to put more volume in them then they take to carry themselves. It isn't a whole lot but every little bit helps. Another bonus is, should you meet an unfortunate demise, a secure can (password protected) can be anchored wherever you died, prohibiting the offending party from scooping the cans and opening them, getting your cargo. Corp management and anchoring skill is required for this though. It doesn't always work (high security regions, cans too close to each other) but it can save you some if you are lucky.

Conclusion

• Run combat missions and use the loot you find to narrow down your search.
• Look for huge gaps between buy and sell orders and plug them.
• Respond to 0.01 ISK price wars aggressively.
• Diversify your buy and sell orders.
• Take notes.
• Use cargo containers.
• Make your home in the most popular station in the most active system.
• Don't fly empty, ever, if you can help it.
• Do you research, your homework, and especially the math.
• Train skills towards the future. Lean towards bettering your ship, setup, and profits.
• Check your route for security concerns, never fly into ships/pods destroyed unless you KNOW you will be safe doing it, ever.
• Never "Gang" with anyone that you do not trust. Many an Indy have been ganked by pirates spamming gang invites and killing you, gang members don't take sec hits.
• Upgrade your gear.

One Last Thing

Don't ask other traders for their routes. Its just not done.. Miners keep priceless asteroid spawns to themselves, Hunters hold close their favorite killing areas, why should you assume it would be any different with trading. You are their competition, they are yours, remember it.

Links

• Eve Central automated trade route finder
• Trading Advice FROM a Three-Week-Old Eve Player
• What I'd Learned So Far - Trading for Very Beginners
• Trading 101