Hot Trading Leads

[Trouble]

After spending about a month of playtime over the last couple years working on making a miner and constantly getting ultrabored, I made a new account for the sole purpose of being a trader. When I say trader I mean mostly placing clever buy and sell orders to extract money from various commodity markets. I plan to do a little bit of hauling, and perhaps ultimately to train for and purchase a freighter. I don't want to be a career hauler, but I do want to be able to take advantage of extremely good deals I find.

Anyway, I've spent the last few days searching the internet for any guild, tips, tricks, anything with information about trading in Eve. I've been able to find very little to work with and have had to try and figure out myself. I started with a fresh new trader created under the new character creation system, heavy into Willpower and Charisma. I used my miner with a barge and a few hours of spare time to farm up 5m in seed money and I went from there.

The one lead I did actually find was on the Eve trading forums. Apparently there's a guy that has been manipulating the +1 implant market for months now. Apparently he has a billion+ worth of every +1 implant and keeps a presence in every single empire region. He keeps an extremely large spread between buy and sell prices on the market buy filling out buy orders with too high a price and sell orders with too high a price. I started out working in three regions where the buy prices were about 150k for an implant and sell prices were above 700k. Over a period of about 36 hours I was able to exploit this huge spread and turn my 5 million into 15 million. The guy who was price fixing came through and repriced the entire market in all three regions to 350k/950k. He also sent me some sort of threat in my mail which I ignored. Anyway, I decided to I wanted to experiment with some other goods for a while and am not trading in +1 implants at the moment.

The next thing I decided on was Nocxium. Operating out of Oursulaert I have been buying up Nocxium in the system and reselling it at the hub on Our III - Federation Navy Testing Facility. I can afford to buy about 20,000 at 650 isk apiece and can resell it for around 700 isk with minimal in system hauling. The turnaround time is probably somewhere around 8 hours and that nets me about a million in profit. Definitely not as high a rate as what I was doing with the implants. I'm starting to look at the +2 implant market now to see if I can do something with it.

Right now it seems to be the tradeoff between low volume, high margin trades and high volume, low margin. I don't seem to have enough isk to take advantage of the high volume mineral trade business but I'm afraid the turnaround time on implants will be too long. I don't really have enough isk to work in multiple commodities or regions yet so my options are pretty limited. I'm also a really big nub so I have very limited game knowledge to work with to find good deals.

I'm curious if anyone has any general trade advice, knows of any guides, howtos, etc or has any specific markets/commidites that you know to be very good. I haven't been able to find any decent disccusion about trading in Eve so I know I'm probably missing out on a lot of fundamentals that would help me.

[WayAbvPar]

I think Mr. Rickey is our resident robber baron capitalist swine...he should have some insights. Whether he wants to share them is another question 

[Furiously]

To me - it has been about finding a balance between the number of systems you go out to for buy and sell orders.  What I tried to do was find an area someone would be grinding up faction for a limited time (Like the only level 2 quality mission agent for a corp) then place buy orders for the likely items the rats would drop. Hopefully I would be the only buyer for small capacitor charges. Or small X guns or afterburners. After I bought them for 1/2th the value of their minerals I would then melt them down and turn around and either make a rifter or just sell the minerals.

I don't like the new contract system, I have a ton of Rifter BPC's and it looks like I have to sell the item for 1M at a minimium. Suppose I could package up like 25 BPC's but at that point the person would be smarter to buy their own BPO.

But back to the topic. Don't discount people being too lazy to move their stuff and just sell it for whatever they can get for it either. (I know I did that when we left -V- space). Then again - I knew I was going to die running out of there. (In a cyclone - I got out fine with my rifter).

[Morat20]

I've actually been refining crap loot for ages now. I keep trying to decide what to make with it.

[WayAbvPar]

Then again - I knew I was going to die running out of there. (In a cyclone - I got out fine with my rifter).

In WHO'S Cyclone? 

[dwindlehop]

Morphite and megacyte are good. Yeg says isotopes have a big spread. Some of the finished T2 production materials are not huge in volume and have a high price, but the turnaround on them can be slow. eve-central.com has a player market trade finder if you want to do some hauling.

One thing I have thought to do is to skim off the cap ship orders where people are buying trit @2.2 in min orders of 200k. If you have the skills, buy trit between the region-wide min order 1 and the region-wide min order 200k, then sell off a stack once it hits. Very low margin, but there's no hauling required. Probably best done with some carefully targeted station range orders instead of a multi-jump order. I haven't tried it yet, so let me know how it turns out if you do.

[MahrinSkel]

Well, the best way to make money is to look for inefficiency in the market.  For example, in the case of your Noxcium arbitrage, you're conglomerating small amounts of Noxcium the original owners don't consider worth hauling, moving them a minimal distance (in this case, around the same system), and reselling at a profit.  Your margin isn't very high (about 7%) but your cash velocity is good because it doesn't take you very long to resell.  The opportunity for profit comes from the inefficiency of moving small cargoes for the sellers, vs. your larger volumes.  If you could find one of the regions where Nocxium is still selling for prices in the 400-500 range, you could make serious bank.

Another example is T2 resale.  There are only a few markets where you can reliably find all the T2 items you would need to outfit a ship, compared to the much larger number of systems where you can find ships.  So if you can find a system with a fairly well developed T1 market, but a spotty T2 market, you can fill in the gaps at a 50% markup and make a lot of money (I did this for a while, made billions).  People will pay your premium rather than fly all the way to a market hub where they can get the same item cheaper.  The inefficiency you're exploiting is that the T2 manufacturers don't bother to sell outside of the major market hubs and the region they build in.

Every opportunity for profit stems from other players being either ignorant, or impatient.  If you have knowledge they don't, or can specialize and get economies of scale, you can make money.

--Dave

[Trouble]

Excellent advice, thanks guys. I suppose I will continue trying to learn the game (especially the parts I don't partake in) so I can figure out where there is potentially money to be made. Meanwhile I will try to continue expanding my hoard from the 15m it is at now.

[Furiously]

Every opportunity for profit stems from other players being either ignorant, or impatient.  If you have knowledge they don't, or can specialize and get economies of scale, you can make money.

The lazy and stupid are soon departed from their ISK?

[Morat20]

The lazy and stupid are soon departed from their ISK?

Nah. It's all relative cost. It might cost me more (in lost time) to drag a hauler to a trading hub for some supplies than it would to pay a premium for buying it in-system. On the other hand, you -- the trader -- find it more profitable to buy, haul, sell.

Time is just another cost.

[Simond]

The lazy and stupid are soon departed from their ISK?

Ask Solar Storm (if AXE are even talking about what happened yet)  :-D

[Raging Turtle]

The lazy and stupid are soon departed from their ISK?

Ask Solar Storm (if AXE are even talking about what happened yet)  :-D

Oh come on, don't leave us hanging!

[Simond]

Short form:

Solar Storm is part of AXE, and got kicked out of their previous region by BoB. They had to relocate to a crappier sector, and work twice as hard for the same ISK

One of Solar Storm's corpmembers, who'd spent hours and hours each day mining for the good of the corp, asked their corp leader why the corp was selling ships to its own members at above market prices instead of at cost or discounted.

Corp leader replied that it was a temporary measure.

The same corp member asked again, a few weeks of mining later.

Corp leader said that it wouldn't change (and implied that if you don't like it, quit).

The corp member had unrestricted access to most corp hangers & POSes.

...

Corp member ran for Empire (and made it) with 15-20 billion ISK worth of AXE assets (Ships, BPOs BPCs, undeployed POSes, etc), stripped fuel from a bunch of AXE POSes (droping them into reinforced mode) and sent a mail to AAA's leader informing him of these facts. He then joined Goonswarm.

All of that because the corp was price gouging its own members, and because they gave PoS & hanger access to someone who was in the corp for around three months.
Did I mention that Solar Storm is AXE's core logistics company, and supply something like three-quarters of AXE's ships? Hmm, maybe that should be 'was' and 'supplied'.

For the want of a nail....

[NiX]

It doesn't pay to screw the people that essentially make you who you are. (YOU HEAR ME SCHILD!?)

[MahrinSkel]

That opens the question of whether the guy was a Goon all along.  Goonies have been getting pretty aggressive about the corp infiltration and theft lately.

--Dave

[climbjtree]

I make a lot of money as an arms dealer out in 0.0. My alliance is in a constant war, and our station is always in need pvp geared modules. Also, with many POS's nearby, I can make lots of money off POS fuel. Typically, I haul 90% fuel, 10% modules. Don't compete and undercut someone's fuel price. POS fuel will almost always sell, and undercutting just drives the average price down - bad for the traders. All the money in that 90/10 haul comes from the 10% modules, though.

If you can get in good with a group out in 0.0, see if you they'll let you haul goods into their station.

[Yoru]

That opens the question of whether the guy was a Goon all along.  Goonies have been getting pretty aggressive about the corp infiltration and theft lately.

--Dave

I believe he was; a coworker was reading the guy's summary of the theft the other day (posted something like 5 months ago) on the SA forums. Since he was already a Goon at the time of theft, it's not unreasonable to assume he was a Goon significantly prior to it. Not all Goons join Goonfleet.

[schild]

It doesn't pay to screw the people that essentially make you who you are. (YOU HEAR ME SCHILD!?)

Cute.

[NiX]

Cute.

I aim to please!

I like Corp theft. It makes the game seem that much more interesting.

[Yegolev]

Well, the spread on ice minerals isn't huge but I had some great success with making buy orders at one-tenth the actual for Strontium Clathrates, and it seems many people did not notice the missing zero.  The buy order for 1/20th, for example, did not fill out nearly as well and I assume it is because "103.00" looks very different from "2006.00" while "200.60" does not.

I don't really invest much time at all in this since time in a hauler is time I could be mining, and the profits on that are much higher than what I am able to do by only trading.

[Trouble]

Been making a lot selling drones the last couple days. I'm up to 60 million so far, not doing bad. =D Thanks to everyone on here and in game that have been giving me pointers and ideas.

Edit: make that 70 million.

[NiX]

60 million ISK? God damn I wish I could break 5 and stay there. I suck.

[Numtini]

T1 drones?

[WayAbvPar]

I am assuming so, yeah. 70M would be a good afternoon for T2 drones I think   :-D

[Numtini]

Why didn't I ever try those?! (Probably because I was minmater and my drone skils were nil.)

[Trouble]

It was T2 drones.

[Trouble]

I gotta say, I am kicking ass at this. Big thanks all around to all the people who have been answering my noob questions. It's been paying off big time. For those interested, here's my networth progress since I started (rough numbers, give or take 5% on any of these):

12/03/06   5 mil
12/05/06   9.5 mil
12/06/06   14 mil
12/07/06   18 mil
12/08/06   22 mil
12/09/06   31.5 mil
12/10/06   48 mil
12/11/06   79 mil
12/12/06   120 mil

[Raging Turtle]

And the more you have, the faster it'll keep increasing...

[NiX]

You're just making drones and selling them?

[Trouble]

Haven't been making anything. Just trading. This is a fresh character, less than two weeks old, so there's not much I can aside from trade really.

[MahrinSkel]

Keep working up your Trade skills, you're going to reach a point soon where you'll have to branch out into either other products or other regions.  Wholesale 4 and Day Trading 3 or 4 will be pretty essential then.

--Dave

[Trouble]

Thankfully the new character creation system is awesome. My character came with Daytrading 4 out of the package and I've been using it quite a bit. I've already branched in buying and selling a few different goods so far and it is proving to be lucrative.

[MahrinSkel]

Something else you're going to need to watch out for: When you start moving cargos worth more than around 150M, you're going to become a target for suicide BS attacks in Empire.  At that point you're going to need either tanked T2 transports, or well-tanked Minmatar T1's.  You need to be able to take a volley of Cruise missles, about 2500 hp raw damage.  I lost a half-billion isk cargo of T2 modules learning that.

--Dave

[Morat20]

Something else you're going to need to watch out for: When you start moving cargos worth more than around 150M, you're going to become a target for suicide BS attacks in Empire.  At that point you're going to need either tanked T2 transports, or well-tanked Minmatar T1's.  You need to be able to take a volley of Cruise missles, about 2500 hp raw damage.  I lost a half-billion isk cargo of T2 modules learning that.

--Dave

Couldn't you train a hauler alt to handle that? As long as no one knew it was you, who'd bug the newb corp alt running around Empire?

I guess I need to explore the trading market....

[MahrinSkel]

Cargo scanners and passive targeting.  They'll set up with one guy in an Interceptor or AF scanning every industrial that comes through, when he finds one with a high-value cargo he passes the word to the BS pilot (usually a Raven, the character has been made just for this purpose and gets discarded when its security rating falls too far), and *blammo*, one shot takes you out.  Then another character in an industrial picks up your stuff (giving you clearance to attack them in your pod, good luck with that) and heads for the nearest station.  You're left with "kill rights" on a disposable character and they wind up with your stuff (what survives).  When you look at the "kills in last hour" starmap overlay and Kisogo, Rens, and Oursalaert are the big red spots, that's why.

--Dave