New Item Profitability over Time

Posted: 2012-06-07 | Author: | Filed under: market | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

Hypothesis: New items become less profitable over time.

Source Data: I picked the Noctis because I have data for 188 sales ranging from Dec/2010 to June/2012. I wanted to look at the Tier3 Battlecruisers, but I lack enough trades on these to be statistically meaningful.

The slope of the trendline suggests that the profitability is every so slightly going down. I assumed that the decline would be much greater than shown by the trendline.

Since a recently added item didn’t show a downward trend, I extend the research sampling. I picked a common item, a common ship, and a high volume item.

1. Here is the graph for 1,534 Damage Control II’s. It shows more downward profitability than the Noctis.

2. The Ishtar is a very popular ship for ratting and mission running. 112 Ishtar trades show a greater profitability decline than the Noctis.

3. The trend of 572 Cybernetic Basic implants shows a slight decline.

Conclusion: I could not prove my hypothesis with data from Noctis sales and I’m showing greater profit decline on more common items. I’ll revisit this when I have more data for the Tier3 Battlecruisers and the modules introduced in Inferno.

Industry and Trading Matrix

Posted: 2012-06-06 | Author: | Filed under: industry, market, nullsec | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

Numbers > Words

If you can’t tell, I’m a very quantifiable person. Using numbers to guide decisions is a method of problem solving that I have cultivated as my professional career has grown.

I remember this one particular insiadent that really stood out where the numbers really proved valuable.

A few years ago when a group of difficult C-level people were up for a laptop refresh, I sent them a simple survey with a list of considerations for their new machines. Each person had rate weight, speed, storage capacity, ruggedness, maximum resolution, monitor size, etc on a scale of 1-3 (3 being the highest priority).

I then took these results and found the general need of the group. The data told me what machine to buy. I wan’t trying to tailor a machine to their needs, their needs dictated the selection. No fights were had when the machines arrived because they all knew that I had properly weighed everyone’s opinions.

To the Spreadsheets!

Since I have performed a number of industry and trading activities in Eve, I felt that the same type of analysis would offer some insight to the greater community.

I made a list of negative and positive factors and applied a value to each of them. The total value has a little bit of logic built into it to help produce a more meaningful result.

Total =(-(Sum all the bad things)+(Sum all the good things))

The English equivalent of this would be something along the line of, “Considering all the bad and good things, what is the best thing I should be doing to make money in Eve?”

(Yes the scale is 1-3, but the sheer amplitude of risk and profitability of Patch Speculation made me weight it with a 4. The external factor of CCP changing a loot table or rebalancing something on the fly is an enormous risk when speculating)

Note that these weights are based on my experiences and therefore you would most likely apply different values to each activity. Just like with the difficult C-level people, getting a larger survey group would help normalize the data and CYA.

Trading 103: QuickBar and UI Layout

Posted: 2012-06-04 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline, industry, market, screenshot | Tags: , , | 5 Comments

The following items are some basic guidelines that I use when setting up the Eve client for my trading operation. Everyone is different, so take my suggestions into consideration when setting up your layout. There are a few ways to be productive with the current UI.

Window Layout

  1. Market on the top section. I merge Mail, Contracts, and Corporation windows into this section.
  2. Wallet with Orders tab open on the bottom merged with Inventory.
  3. Local isolated on the lower left and any special or intel channels above it.
  4. Station services left alone on the right.

QuickBar

This area of the Market interface is the lifeblood of my operation. Take the time to properly setup your lists with folders as it will allow you to quickly scan and locate items.

I’m only interested in around 400 or so items out of the thousands of items on the market — don’t spend time typing in the Search, have everything in your QuickBar!

I take one client and make it the master and when I have finalized  a number of edits to the QuickBar, I copy it to other character’s setups. There is a unique .dat file for each character.

Location
C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\[eve instance name]\settings (Windows 7)

File
core_user_[eve user id].dat

Example of my organized QuickBar:

Order Highlighting

Enable this with the Market > Settings > Mark my orders option. I use this to visually show how I am controlling a market. It can also give you insight into how competitive the item is by how many orders have been updated since your last check.

Updating Prices

An update operation involves me going down the Wallet > Oders list, double-clicking on each row. If an order needs updating, I right-click on it and selecting Modify Order.

Scroll-wheel

Did you know that you can move prices from the Modify window up or down by 0.01 ISK by using the scroll-wheel? I discovered this by accident. Happy 0.01’ing!

Newer Entries →