Trading 101: An Introduction to the Basics
Posted: 2010-11-08 Filed under: market | Tags: jita, profit, trade 12 CommentsTime brings change; careers and interests change over time in Eve as they do within all our lives.
I started my Eve career off mining in highsec, then lowsec, then mining in WH space. Later on I moved to nullsec and recently trading has peaked my interests. Below are some general tips that hopefully will spark your interest in trading or, if you are an already established trader, will help you refine your skills.
Blake’s Advice for Trading:
- Review the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (yes, I have seen every episode of ST:TNG).
- Buy low, sell high.
- Find a market. This can be T1, T2, meta, fuel, PI, ships, etc within highsec, lowsec, a mission hub, a nullsec market (they do exist!). Recently, Chribba took sov in Providence to make 9UY4-H a open trading station.
- Get your Accounting and Broker Relations skills to IV to reduce taxes.
- Have some start-up capital, any amount will do. I started with 2 B.
- Watch the Market Forum on eveonline.com for anything written or commented by Akita T.
- Beware of advice on the Market forum due to people wishing to artificially inflate a product.
- It is not called Spreadsheets in Space for nothing, get Excel (or Open Office for you people) open and start your research.
- Use a program to track your profits. I use Eve Trader since it can aggregate multiple wallets and produce pretty graphs. The original project has been abandoned; however, due to the open source of the code, the project has been picked up and had been updated. Not all features work, but the core ones of aggregating multiple wallets and doing the math (sell – buy – taxes = profit) work. Updated project here.
- Minimize Jita local. It is terrible and will give you a headache.
- If you are wardc’d, use Red Frog Freight to move your goods around. It costs me around 5M to move up to 900,000 m3 13 jumps with a max of 1B collateral.
- Get at least two monitors. You will want to have your Jita/Amarr alt on one screen, your research, and your new market on the other screen.
So how am I doing?
I’ve been trading in a new market for the past 22 days and am averaging 62.4 M / day in profit.
Want to know more? Send me any amount of ISK and I will send you double back!
k162space 
Anyone else as interested in seeing the excel sheet as I am? heh
Thanks for crushing my dreams! Would I be reading this if I had 2-3 B spare? 😀
I started trading with just 20 mil. Though instead of the method outlined in this post, I started off with looking up items with a large enough margin between the buy and sell prices, list buy orders for them, and then resell the goods that filled those orders. Got my first few billion through that method.
I have found 600m is decent starting. I did that by buying 2 plexus at the time. From that I was making 75 – 100m a day.
Now that I have made over 5 bil in the last few months, I stepped back to just get on 2x a day to update my orders. I don’t make as much as I would if I nursed it, but it saves me from burning out.
Even thought I have made 5 bil, I really only use 500m at a time for the market, and keep it mellow.
Oh one thing I have noticed, I don’t log on at peak times anymore to play the .01 game, I take advance of the slower times, find I can make more and my orders last longer.
Occasionally when I see a really good deal, I log more to nurse it.
Very good post. I have thought about doing this too, but it seemed tedious. I do like your idea about using 2 screens. I have this now, and it works well for other things too.
About how many hours a day do you spend trading?
During the week, maybe about 1-2 hours. Weekend I have been on for maybe 3-4 hours total.
Oh one thing I forgot to say – love this post, would love to see more trading posts!
You got it. I’ve got plans for some more Trading 102, 201, 202 and advanced stuff! Keep an eye out.
Regarding the excel vs OO and the trading app…
I access eve from multiple locations and have found google docs works just as well, and I can access it from anywhere (including my iPad).
Be careful on the trading apps…there are often errors and assumptions those devs make that can cause isk to leak from your wallet.
Also, tying your reputation to anyone on MD forum can lead to hurt feelings. Your choice of MD prophet is…surprising.
KB
[…] Blog type: Personal * Author: K162space * Link: https://k162space.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/trading-101/ * Summary: Tips on trading / Important link for traders: […]
[…] but if you have the means it can result in higher gains. If you haven’t read them, review Trading 101 and 102; these are a quick refresher course on my trading […]
Very good info. I am thinking about making a serious effort at trading, and reading your post gave me some tips that I had not found anywhere else. And, just like dharh mentioned above, I would really be interested in knowing where you got that spreadsheet and if you know of any comprehensive spreadsheets-especially ones that automatically update themselves.