Hot Trading Leads

[Yoru]

Yet another reason for me to transport things in a Kestrel with cargo expanders. Maybe I'll move up to an interceptor or covops for transport one day.

[Morat20]

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

I'd fogotten about cargo scanners. I suppose my conservative nature actually helps here. I have the urge to find out EVERYTHING about something before I try it. I haven't tried trading yet -- beyond the "hey, this AB is worth 500k ISK, I should put it on the market rather than accept the 15k the station buyer is offering level.

I guess that's one reason I like EVE -- and liked SWG for that matter. I can switch directions, and all it costs me is time. No rerolling or anything like that. And with my job, and my school --- it's not uncommon for me to have four or five days when I'd be hard pressed to log on to switch skills, much less play. (I think I'm doing Science 5 now since I'm working support).

You wouldn't happen to know if there's a way to get detailed historical market data in EVE, would you? I know CCP dumps some stats, but I don't recall seeing that.

[Reg]

I use an Occator for moving high value stuff. Currently I just have the lows filled with nanofibers. Is that good enough or should I put on hardeners to handle these guys?

[Yoru]

Detailed historical data like the graphs and datatables in the market views, or do you mean more detailed than that?

[Trouble]

Good to know that about suicides. I didn't realize it was so prevalent. I had planned to move to T2 haulers asap anyway but now I have good reason.

[MahrinSkel]

Generally they avoid T2 transports, a stock Occator could take your typical newb-corper cruise barrage without dying (might dip into structure, would die if they were using T2 missles but that takes longer to train).  Mastodons are uncommon, so they still take pot-shots at mine occasionally because they don't recognize it as a T2 (with the same resists as a Vagabond, no less).  That I've noticed, it's claimed 4 suicide Ravens (over 5000 shield and minimum 40% resist).  Definitely want to shield-tank, save the lows for either speed mods or cargo expanders.

--Dave

[Raging Turtle]

I assume freigthers can surive most any attack before concord blows the aggresors away?

[Yegolev]

How much of a wrench does warp-to-zero throw into those pirates' tactics?

[MahrinSkel]

Some, I'm sure, but they'll catch you while you're trying to warp away from the gate rather than crawling to it, and a lot of people use autopilot.  Fully expanded industrials are a little bit slow to go into warp.  Definitely want to manually pilot through a major "hot zone" like Kisogo.

--Dave

[Trouble]

I've been too impatient to use autopilot and I've been operating in a relatively small area so travel time hasn't been an issue.

[Comstar]

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

I suck at Eve :(. You can get numbers like that, and I'm happy to get 3 million in a 1 shot deal that's not able to be repeated.

[ajax34i]

Yeah, but he's applying everything he earns back into the trade.  He's putting the 48 mil, then the 79 mil, then the 120 mil, in the form of goods, into a ship, and he's flying it around, vulnerable to suicide attacks in high sec, and gate camps in low sec.  He could lose it ALL in about 5 seconds flat.

[Trouble]

That's not exactly true. I'm not really a hauler per se, though I do have to move goods a bit. At any given time about 40% of my networth is tied up in buy orders, 40% in goods that are in sell orders, and 20% in a combination of isk in my wallet or items I've recently acquired through buy orders that need to be moved a few jumps.

[Morat20]

Detailed historical data like the graphs and datatables in the market views, or do you mean more detailed than that?

More detailed. I've been playing with financial data mining, and EVE looks like a very interesting place to attempt to apply it. I saw there was a "save to file" button on the Market somewhere -- I'll have to look into that.

Are there any good tutorials on Buy and Sell orders? I was looking into the contracts system and trying to figure out some of the mechanics that were available to traders.

[Trouble]

I don't know anything about the contract system, but placing bull and sell orders on the market is pretty simple. If you want to buy an item, you go to it in the market and then there's a button for Place Buy Order. If you want to place a sell order, right click on the item in your hanger, sell, then go advanced. If you put it up for a price higher than any available buy orders, it will create a sell order out of it. With the skills available out of the box on my trader noob character I've been able to do everything I needed.

[Morat20]

I don't know anything about the contract system, but placing bull and sell orders on the market is pretty simple. If you want to buy an item, you go to it in the market and then there's a button for Place Buy Order. If you want to place a sell order, right click on the item in your hanger, sell, then go advanced. If you put it up for a price higher than any available buy orders, it will create a sell order out of it. With the skills available out of the box on my trader noob character I've been able to do everything I needed.

Okay, then I place sell orders all the time -- on a lot of higher-end loot (in terms of L2 missions -- not exactly multi-billion ISK stuff).

[ajax34i]

Buy orders can have a range associated with them, too, and this range is increased by skills.  By default, the range is "station only", meaning that your order will be visible everywhere, but they have to haul their goods to your station before being able to sell.  If you increase the range, they don't have to haul, but YOU do (you have to go pick up all the items that are all over the place, bits and pieces here and there depending on where everyone sold to you).

This is usually used to place blanket buy orders with way-below-the-market-average offers.  Buy battleships for 30 Mil ISK, for example.  A lot of people don't bother hauling their junk and just sell it for whatever's offered, and it's common that the only thing offered is one of these blanket orders.

The rest of the trade skills let you modify your orders without having to go to the station where you initiated them.  You can avoid actually going to Jita this way, by managing your Jita orders from some remote system at the edge of the region.  You can also manage your orders across multiple regions faster; just park yourself at a border between 2-3 regions, and you only have to hop once to modify your orders, instead of having to travel to all the trade hubs etc. 

Modifying orders enters into play when some competitor outbids/underbids you, and you have to re-price your orders to beat him.  It's nice to be able to do it without having to travel all over the place.

The art of re-selling involves not just looking at price histories, but also understanding the map / area / region, knowing where the trade hubs are, where the hunting spots are, where the gateways to 0.0 are.  The map helps somewhat, because you can color stars by faction, by how crowded the systems are, or by PvP, but you might also have to dig for high quality agents and see where they are located if you wanna sell modules to the mission crowd (and buy their "rares" locally at discount prices), or look at how many belts various systems have if you wanna serve the miners.

[Yoru]

Make sure you get Broker Relations when messing with modifying orders. They like to take a big ole chunk out of your ass each time you adjust prices. (At least, upwards. They'll charge the minimum when adjusting downwards.)

[Morat20]

Buy orders can have a range associated with them, too, and this range is increased by skills.  By default, the range is "station only", meaning that your order will be visible everywhere, but they have to haul their goods to your station before being able to sell.  If you increase the range, they don't have to haul, but YOU do (you have to go pick up all the items that are all over the place, bits and pieces here and there depending on where everyone sold to you).

This is usually used to place blanket buy orders with way-below-the-market-average offers.  Buy battleships for 30 Mil ISK, for example.  A lot of people don't bother hauling their junk and just sell it for whatever's offered, and it's common that the only thing offered is one of these blanket orders.

The rest of the trade skills let you modify your orders without having to go to the station where you initiated them.  You can avoid actually going to Jita this way, by managing your Jita orders from some remote system at the edge of the region.  You can also manage your orders across multiple regions faster; just park yourself at a border between 2-3 regions, and you only have to hop once to modify your orders, instead of having to travel to all the trade hubs etc. 

Modifying orders enters into play when some competitor outbids/underbids you, and you have to re-price your orders to beat him.  It's nice to be able to do it without having to travel all over the place.

The art of re-selling involves not just looking at price histories, but also understanding the map / area / region, knowing where the trade hubs are, where the hunting spots are, where the gateways to 0.0 are.  The map helps somewhat, because you can color stars by faction, by how crowded the systems are, or by PvP, but you might also have to dig for high quality agents and see where they are located if you wanna sell modules to the mission crowd (and buy their "rares" locally at discount prices), or look at how many belts various systems have if you wanna serve the miners.

Oh, I see. So I could place a "Buy order" (over a big area if I had the skill) for, say, Y-S8 boosters. Then anyone who looted one might go into the station, attempt to sell it, and note the "best region price" happened to be mine -- at say 250k ISK. They might sell it to me immediately, or they might place a sell order for 500k ISK (which is roughly the right price) and wait to see if anyone buys it.

I could then round up those Y-S8 boosters (sitting at stations all over the bloody place) and place a big sell order for, say, 400k. I'd make 150k per booster, and undercut most of the looters. But I'd have to collect them all (or, if I had the skills, issue the sell order remotely).

Okay, now this is making sense.

[MahrinSkel]

When you find a good unexploited market niche, exponential growth until you fill it is normal.  Most of the largest niches are highly competitive, however.  For example, it's hard to make money on minerals arbitrage on a large scale, because the unexploited niches are all 3rd tier systems with comparatively low volumes.  You can make some decent cash there, but it takes a lot of capital to eke out a decent profit for your time (and a freighter for the cheap, high-bulk stuff like Mexallon and below).

I happened to find an area last night where a surplus of Nocxium had built up, almost 4 million units at prices of 450-550 p/u (Jita price is 650+ right now).  Two fully loaded Mastodons and a night's sleep later, I was 500M isk richer.  Money makes money, I could take advantage of that opportunity because I was sitting on nearly 2B in cash I've been saving for a Carrier, and had two characters with highly-expanded T2 transports (over 100M each, 200M when I put them together).  My actual time investment was maybe 20 minutes, the rest was spent autopiloting while watching TV in the other room or sleeping while the sell orders were filled.

Broker Relations (lowered broker fees for setting orders) and Accounting (reduced sales taxes) do tend to pay for themselves once you're moving large amounts of cash around.

There are various methods of good, old-fashioned market manipulation, like buying up all the goods of a type in a region under a given price and then repricing them, but they take more time actually at the computer than I am willing to commit.  I prefer casting a wide net for good deals on high-value-density goods.

Intra-region trade is generally where the best, most repeatable profits come from.

--Dave

[Trouble]

I've been branching out pretty much since day two of my drone trading. It's been a GREAT base income but my other trades have greatly overtaken it at this point. For me so far the trick has been coninually tapping new items. I've been sticking to the same markets so far though. Each day I add 2-4 items to my list of things I trade and I am quickly approaching my current cap on orders. =( But I'm also getting rich so no sadfaces there.

[NiX]

I was just wondering which stats are best for a trader to have up there?

[MahrinSkel]

Charisma higher than most bother with helps, but you don't need a great deal of SP investment for all the useful trade skills.  Beyond that, you're going to need to fly those T2 transports, and maybe freighters someday, so all the usual suspects.  Shave a couple of points off the Perception/Willpower of your typical build and put them in Charisma, and you're fine.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

The "save to file" thing almost gave me enough impetus to write a perl script to parse that into something useful.  Almost.

[Morat20]

The "save to file" thing almost gave me enough impetus to write a perl script to parse that into something useful.  Almost.

I'm going to have to see what it does, but I don't think I can get enough data to be useful -- not without more effort than I care to make at the moment. I bet there's the makings of a good paper in that, though. Analysis of the EVE market -- whether from an ecomomic perspective or a data mining perspective -- would be damn interesting.

[Raging Turtle]

I think the devs have mentioned more than once that some economic students have done projects/papers on it. 

[dwindlehop]

The eve-central.com market tells you when buy orders are above sell orders, but I'd rather know when buy orders that have been filled are very far from sell orders that get filled (i.e. doing what Trouble is doing).

[ajax34i]

The save to file button only appears when you pick 1 item to look at, on the market (example:  Bantam Frigate).  It doesn't appear for a category of items (example:  Caldari Frigates), or broader categories (example: Ships).  It exports all the prices you see (basically all the sale orders and all the buy orders for Bantam Frigate) to a comma-delimited text file.

price,volRemaining,typeID,range,orderID,volEntered,minVolume,bid,issued,duration,stationID,regionID,solarSystemID,jumps,
3200021.0,1.0,620,32767,331208740,6,1,False,2006-12-14,14,60004324,10000033,30002751,7,
3300000.0,1.0,620,32767,329908626,1,1,False,2006-12-12,7,60003913,10000033,30002740,10,
3350000.0,2.0,620,32767,331032707,2,1,False,2006-12-14,14,60004453,10000033,30002739,8,
3400000.0,1.0,620,32767,330712532,2,1,False,2006-12-13,90,60003904,10000033,30002739,8,
3450000.0,2.0,620,32767,330089449,5,1,False,2006-12-12,7,60002782,10000033,30002784,6,
3550000.0,1.0,620,32767,330170429,1,1,False,2006-12-12,30,60004168,10000033,30002783,6,
3600000.0,8.0,620,32767,327097304,10,1,False,2006-12-07,90,60004168,10000033,30002783,6,
3650000.0,1.0,620,32767,329527553,1,1,False,2006-12-11,90,60004321,10000033,30002756,12,
4200000.0,5.0,620,32767,328074150,5,1,False,2006-12-09,90,60004348,10000033,30002793,5,
4300000.0,4.0,620,32767,288428129,5,1,False,2006-09-24,90,60001756,10000033,30002749,7,
4300000.0,1.0,620,32767,305331173,5,1,False,2006-10-26,90,60004324,10000033,30002751,7,
2460021.0,14.0,620,32767,329092070,20,1,True,2006-12-14,90,60002866,10000033,30002762,7,
2460012.0,3.0,620,32767,330086789,10,1,True,2006-12-13,7,60003784,10000033,30002816,7,
2460000.0,1.0,620,32767,330590141,3,1,True,2006-12-13,90,60000889,10000033,30002787,7,
2100500.0,10.0,620,1,301686093,10,1,True,2006-10-24,90,60003910,10000033,30002738,9,

The stationID, regionID, solarSystemID are probably the internal database numbers that CCP uses, and they have exported their Revelations data already.  So, if you want to see names such as Jita on the thing, you'll have to pull them out of the official CCP exports and correlate them into these text files.  Or something.

This is what that looks like, in-game.

In any case, you will only be able to export the data for one item in one region per click of the button.

[Morat20]

Crud. I need to create the EVE S&P. :)

[Trouble]

Blah I'm going to start hitting my active orders cap. I didn't realize I'd hit it so quick. This is going to put a stop on my exponential growth for a few weeks while I train up to get Wholesale. That makes me sad. =(

[NiX]

I don't feel your pain. Suck it up! =P

[Reg]

You could always make another trade character and let him handle some orders couldn't you?

[Endie]

You could always make another trade character and let him handle some orders couldn't you?

In the pantheon of geniuses you will be painted standing slightly apart and above the rest, chatting to casually to God.  That's not in green, either.  To the character generator!

[Trouble]

Actually I'm pretty sure there would be no reason that wouldn't work. Genius!

[dwindlehop]

Do any of you guys use marketing? I've been debating picking it up for a while now but haven't done so.