TRADE102 - Station Trading
From UniWiki
| Station Trading | |
|---|---|
| TRADE102 | |
| School of Economics | |
 | |
| Course | TRADE |
| Complexity | 1 |
| Practical | Optional |
| Overview | |
| Techniques to optimize the station trading experience. | |
Syllabus
- Setting up your window to maximize comfort
- Learning the basic settings and options
- Putting up buy and sell orders
- Remote Trading
- Trade skills
- Marketing
- Visiblity
- Daytrading
- Margin Trading
This class will teach how to start off with station trading. It covers techniques to optimize the station trading experience.
Teaching Guide
General Information
Student requirements
Anyone attending should be familiar with the trade UI, either through their own experiences or by attending TRADE101 It is required to be docked up, and depending on the teacher a small practical may be done at the end. The practical should only be illustrative and thus not be obligatory.
What is required:
- Access to mumble is needed - Mumble setup
- You will need to be in the class.e-uni or lecture.e-uni chat-channel
Notes for the teacher
- It's smart to start off with explaining the window setup * for station trading - this way everyone sees what you see
- Explain the potential of station trading versus others methods, and why you think people should station trade
- It might be useful to explain how margin trade scamming works.
- Make it clear that this is a starting guide, and that trading is very much defined by personal preference. Nothing here is set in stone.
- Useful links * are at the end of this document.
Possible pratical
Remric had a practical which might be nice to do. At the beginning of class he would give someone sensor boosting scripts to distribute among everyone in the class channel who x-ed up. Every student would receive one script.
This script also served to show people how to set up buy and sell orders.
After class he told everyone to put up sell orders for the scripts, telling them that he would buy one script between 1 and 2 hours after class. The student who sold the script to him would win, and receive 10 million ISK.
This lead to very intersting behaviour, as people would get scripts from Hek and put them up, making profit from other people trying to buy out the whole market while others were waging hardcore 0.01 ISK warfare. It was very illustrative, as one person won, other people made profits, prices shifted heavily, and I lost 11 million ISK due to surplus stock which I'm still selling off.
He used sensor booster scripts because they're cheap and can be traded in bulk, other items can of course be used.
Station Trading Theory
Pros and cons
Station trading is both loved and hated in Eve, which makes it all the more interesting. Some people will make buy and sell orders for every personal purchase, while others will happily receive less ISK for their items to avoid setting orders.
Pros
- Station trading can be done during wartime, as you stay in station
- It is possible to make ISK while being inactive, most station traders check their items once or twice a day
- The risk/reward ratio is determined by you
- It is a nice secondary money-maker
- It is nicely combined with hauling to make a trader/hauler alt
- With skills, it can be done remotely (up to from anywhere within your current region)
- It is widely viewed as the greatest potential income source in the game
Cons
- Station trading can be highly frustrating
- It takes time and patience
- It requires initial research
- It requires math(ewww) and may require spreadsheets
- The market can lead you to get losses
- Items can move tediously slow sometimes, and might yield a profit after weeks
- It is limited by volume and competition
The general idea
The idea of station trading is the same as normal trading - you buy an item at a low price and sell it at a higher price.
This is done by first setting a buy order, wait until the buy order is (partially) fulfilled, and then putting up a sell order.
Differences with other forms of trading
Station trading differs from other forms of trading in multiple ways:
- There are no immediate buys or sells, so no immediate gains
- There is no hauling involved, but it may be combined with hauling for better profits
- Normally the range is set to station-only to avoid hauling
Basic Terminology
- Sell Order: top half of Market Data tab, an offer to sell at a certain price
- Buy Order: bottom half of Market Data tab, a request to buy at a certain price
Is station trading for you?
To be a good station trading, you need to be into it. It's not for everyone. In order to be any good at it, and have fun while doing so, you need the following:
- Knowledge
- Initial investment - (I started with 5 mil)
- A good location
- Common sense
- The ability to assess risk according to your liking
- You need to be able to cope with incidental losses
- Patience - the hardest requirement
- If you find you can't leave an order alone to let it mull for a week, station trading might not be for you
- If you don't have the patience to calculate margins, it might not be for you
- If you can't stand being outbid by 0.01 ISK 40 times a day, it isn't for you
Skills and Their Effects
Attributes for trade skills
There are numerous skills which improve trading. It is important to note that all trading skills fall under 3 attributes, namely: charisma, willpower and memory.
For a pure station trading alt, I recommend to remap your attributes to this:
- Intelligence: 17
- Perception: 17
- Charisma: 23
- Willpower: 22
- Memory: 22
If you purely station trade buy expensive implants, since you will get major bonusses with zero chance of losing the implants.
This will greatly speed up station trading skills. If you want to combine hauling with station trading it might be better to use EVEmon to determine what's better.
Open Order Skills
Whichever type of trading you do, you always need to be able to actually put up orders. There are a number of skills which help do this. The maximum amount of orders is 305, with all these skills maxed and including the 5 you get by default. This limit is buy and sell orders combined. Don't go overboard on this, I found that wholesale 2 is more than enough for trading 40-45 different items.
- Trade (rank 1): +4 orders per level
- Retail (rank 2, req. Trade 2): +8 orders per level
- Wholesale (rank 4, req. Retail 5, Marketing 2): +16 orders per level
- Tycoon (rank 6, req. Wholesale 5, Marketing 4): +32 orders per level
Cost Reduction Sklls
Trading isn't free - over every buy order and sell order you put out, you pay a certain fee. Luckily there are a few skills which help you reduce these fees. Both these amounts are visible under the orders tab.
Brokers Fee
Brokers fee is payed over both buy and sell orders, and starts off at 1% of the price. There is always a minimum brokers fee of 100 ISK, which is also applied everytime you modify a buy or sell order, this fee is not lowered by skills or standing.
The skill to bring this amount down is:
- Broker Relations (rank 2, req. Trade 2): -5% broker fee per level
When maxxed out, this means a brokers fee of 0.75%.
The brokers fee is also modifief by faction and corp faction. Don't worry about this too much, the orders tab calculates this for you.
The complete formula to calculate brokers fee is:
- Broker Fee % = (1.000 % – 0.050 % × Skill) / e ^ (0.1000 × Faction + 0.04000 × Corp)
Sales Tax
Sales tax is exclusively paid over sell orders and also starts out at 1%, it can be lowered by the following skill:
- Accounting (rank 3, req. Trade 4): -10% sales tax per level
At max skill this means the sales tax is 0.5%.
How sales tax and brokers fee interact
Since it may be unclear how sales tax and brokers fee interact, a short explanation will be given.
For a buy order the total price for a buy order = price * (1 + brokers fee %)
E.g. 1000 * (1.01) = 1010 (with 1% brokers fee)
For sell orders the total price for a sales order = price - (price * sales tax %) - (price * brokers fee %)
E.g. 1000 - (1000*0.01=10)-(1000*0.01=10) = 980 (with brokers fee and sales tax both at 1%)
This means that brokers fee and sales tax do not interact with each other to stack.
Margin Trading - a.k.a. the scam-trade skill
This skill is for advanced trading, and can bring risk as well as reward. First of all, this is the skill:
- Margin Trading (rank 3, req. Accounting 4): -25% cumulative escrow requirement for buy orders per level
When putting out a buy order you normally put the whole amount in escrow, meaning the game keeps it as insurance you can actually pay for the good you ordered. Margin trading allows you to reduce the amount of escrow when putting out a buy order - effectively letting you put out buy orders for more money then you actually have.
The amount of escrow goes like this:(numbers rounded)
- Level 1: 75%
- Level 2: 56.25%
- Level 3: 42.19%
- Level 4: 31.64%
- Level 5: 23.73%
At level 5 this means that a 10.000.000 buy order only needs 2.373.046 ISK to put up the order.
This can be exploited, as when someone can't pay the amount they buy order will not come through. Combined with a minimum amount on the buy order it is a powerful scamming tool.
If you see an order with a high price and minimum amount, this IS a scam!
It also means that if you put out an order without paying attention, you can easily suck through all your ISK by accident.
Detailed explanation of the margin-trading scam
The margin-trade scam is quite complex, but I'll try to explain as simply as I can.
The steps go like this:
- The scammer puts up a trade order with margin trade V, with a high price and high minimum buy
- E.g. 30 million item x at 100 ISK per item with a minimum order of 30 million (while it's normally 50 ISK per item x)
- He makes sure his wallet is empty, in whatever way
- This insures that the order can't fulfil, because he simply doesn't have the money to let the order go through
- The victim comes along and sees the huge order at high price, he assumes he can make a huge profit
- The victim starts buying up the market, at higher prices then usual
- He reasons that buying at 90 ISK and selling at 100 ISK is still profit, assuming he beats other people in fulfilling the buy order
- The poor victim reached his 30 mil goal only to find out he can't offload it, realising he just lost a lot of money
- The victim then realizes it's best to just offload what he has, since he's never gonna get that money back
- Mostly the amount is so huge and the price so high that hauling it to another place doesn't matter
- The scammer anticipated this, and has a huge buy order somewhere below the normal buy orders
- This will probably be an alt character of the scammer
- The scam is completed, and the scammer will now have a lot of items at a low price
- Profit for the scammer - loss for the victim
Note that:
- The scammer is actually quite risk-free
- His order can never be fulfilled
- His alt-lower-buy-order is lower than the market, thus also safe
- This scam can upset the market greatly
- Which you can actually profit off - since the sell price will go up swiftly
- The victim actually loses a lot, don't let this be you
- This is completely legal
Remote Trading Skills
Since you can't always be where you trade, or might want to trade when missioning, there is the possibility to trade remotely. In station trading this means you put up orders somewhere else while sitting in your base system.
All of these skills work with modification range, which is determined by level:
- Level 1: system
- Level 2: 5 jumps from current location
- Level 3: 10 jumps from current location
- Level 4: 20 jumps from current location
- Level 5: whole region
Note that you can never trade between regions, even if you are only a single jump from another region.
The skills are:
- Marketing (rank 3, req. Trade 2): create Sell Orders at modification range
- Procurement (rank 3 req. Marketing 2): create Buy Orders at modification range
- Daytrading (rank 1, req. Trade 4): modify existing orders at modification range
- Visibility (rank 3, req. Procurement 4): set a range for remote Buy Orders, limited by modification range
These skills are only needed if doing remote trades. If you are present at the location you can do anything.
Where to trade
As in real-estate, station trading is all about one thing: location, location, location. Knowing where to trade is everything, but for station trading you mostly want to be at a trade hub.
The main trade hubs in high-sec are:
- Jita - The Forge - the holy mother of trade hubs
- Rens - Heimatar
- Amarr - Throne Worlds
- Dodixie - Sinq Laison
- Hek - Metropolis
There are two ways to identify trade hubs:
- Go to the market -> browse -> open top tab -> open top tab -> open top tab -> select top category -> click top item; the *very* first item in the market will show you the regional trade hub
- Go to the map (F10) -> world map control panel -> star map -> stars -> statistics -> check number of pilots currently docked and active
Market Window detailed description
This section will explain the market window and how to use it effectively. The market windows consists of two main sections, the sidebar and the main window. Both have seperate tabs and settings.
Sidebar
The sidebar consists of a number of things. In the top the name of the region is stated, this is important because trade between regions isn't possible without moving.
Beneath that is the range filter, which can be set to three modes:
- Station
- System
- Region
These ranges only apply to the browse list and the groups tab.
Completely at the bottom is a checkbox "show only available", unchecking this let's you see items in the browse list even if they're not sold within your range setting. Unchecking this box is highly advisable, because you can then see all items as opposed to only what's there now. (e.g. looking up titans)
Browse tab
The browse tab shows a hierarchical list of market items, sorted alphabetically. It's a good idea to mess around with this a bit, to get a feel of what items belong where.
Rightclicking a group will give you three options:
- Expand/Collapse - will open or close the group, handy to do via rightclick if you lose oversight.
- Add group to quickbar folder
- Add group to quickbar root
Search tab
The search tab let's you search the market, without restrictions on range.
Quickbar tab
The quickbar tab allows you to mark certain items in order to find them quicker. The view consists of alphabetically sorted folders, which can be nested. At the bottom is a button to create a new folder which will be put in the root folder.
Stuff you can do within the quickbar tab:
- Drag and drop items from one folder to another
- Change the label of a folder
- Drag and drop folders into a deeper folder
- Remove items from the quickbar
- Sort folders by arbitrarily putting numbers in from of them (I put folders at the end by putting z's in front of the label)
Things you can't do in the quickbar tab:
- Dragging and dropping folders back into a higher folder or the root folder
- Moving multiple items at once
Setting up the quickbar for station trading
The quickbar is a powerful tool for station traders, because it allows you to mark items you like and thus have a simple view with all the items you want to trade.
How to do this:
- Make a folder in the quickbar named "All"
- Go to the browse window collapse and collapse every group
- For every group: rightclick -> add group to folder -> select the "All" folder
You now have every item possible in the "All" folder, which gives you one main advantage over the browse window. You can delete items while looking for good trades.
This means that now you can start in the all folder, start in a certain group and look for good items.
There are two strategies to handle this:
- The first; while looking, delete the bad stuff, leaving only the yummy trades
- The second(what I do); when you find a good item, drag it to another folder. If you want to review certain items again, you won't see the items I've already traded or paid attention too.
Main window
Details Tab
Market Data subtab
The market data subtab shows all Buy and Sell Orders in your region, and has a number of columns:
- Jumps - the amount of jumps from where the order is placed
- Quantity
- Price
- Expires in - the time until the order expires, always set this to the max of 3 months
- Location - the station from which the order was put
The buy orders part also has the range column, which is a tad special. When someone sets the buy order range to high, it means you can fulful their buy order from somewhere other then their base station. If you can sell it from your current station, the row is green. This means you can just sell the item and let the buyer worry about the transportation of the item.
Furthermore:
- You can sort by every column
- You can move columns around by using the make primary button - which is a bit tedious
- If a filter is set, it can be toggled on and off for either buyers and sellers.
- You can export your currently active orders to a CSV file with the "export to file" button underneath (.../My Documents/EVE/logs/Marketlogs/ )
You can place a buy order with the "place buy order" button, how to do this will be explained in more detail below.
Price History subtab
The price history graph is your main way to figure out if an item is good for tade. Knowing what's what here is very important.
The graph
Let's first talk about the graph itself, all of which is based on the prices on the left side of the graphic, it contains:
- The green line is the 20 day average - meaning the average price over 20 days
- The red line is the 5 day average, basically the same but with 5 days so as to see the market fluctuating more
- The yellow dots are the daily median
- The yellowish bars are the min/max price
- The filled in red-ish area is the donchian channel
The bottom is actually not part of the lines, and should be interpreted diffently. This is the daily volume, and the amounts are stated at the right side of the graph.
Furthermore, there are a few features belonging to the graph:
- You can switch certain things on or off, by right-clicking the graph
- You can set the time-span of the graph, from 1 year to 5 days with different intervals. 3 months is recommended.
Obviously, this is detailed and complicated information. To effectively use this knowledge learn the Bullworth Burger Method
The table
The table is a less powerful means of identifying items then the graph, but it can be useful in case the graph is hard to read or if specific number are needed. (I myself use it to identify daily amounts more precisely for my spreadsheet)
It shows:
- Total daily orders
- Quantity of items traded
- Highest daily sale
- Lowest daily buy
- Average daily sale/buy
It can be sorted by any column.
Groups Tab
The groups tab will show you all the items in a current market group, depending on your filter. It gives you a good view if you want to compare items to fit, because it shows:
- The price in station
- If you have the required skills
- The power requirement of the item - and if it can be fitted on your currently active shop
- The CPU requirement of the item - and if it can be fitted on your currently active shop
Not specifically useful for station trading, but nice for fitting your ship.
My Orders Tab
The my orders tab is very important for station trading, since you need it to actually see your orders and be able to modify them.
It shows:
- Sell orders - top half
- Buy orders - bottom half
- Your order limit - underneath the buy orders
- Misc info about your orders such as range/tax/broker's fee/amount is escrow
Sell and buy orders have the same properties as explained in the details tab.
Note that this is exactly identical as the orders tab in your wallet. However, you'll probably never use it out of the market window.
Use the orders tab of your wallet, since then you can look at the details tab and orders simultaneously, saving a huge amount of effort.
Settings Tab
The settings tab consists of two sections, the filter section and the advanced settings section. Be mindful of these settings, because it is possible that items will not appear if you set these wrong, leading to faulty market analysis and possibly ISK loss.
Filtering options
Filtering options create a filter which can be used to filter the details tab. The difference between this and advanced settings is that this filter can be toggled in the details tab.
The filter has these options, which can be combined:
- Price: limit to a specific price range
- Jumps: limit to within a specific jump range of current system
- Quantity: limit to a specific quantity range
- Sell Orders Deviation: filter out Sell Orders outside a given deviation of regional average
- Buy Orders Deviation: filter out Buy Orders outside a given deviation of regional average
Advanced settings
The advanced settings are mostly for fitting a ship, and thus making this easier. These settings cannot be toggled except from this window.
These settings filter the browse window:
- Filter by Skills: filter out items you do not have the skills to use
- Filter by CPU and Power: filter out items that cannot be fit onto your current ship
- Filter by Untrained Skills: filter out skillbooks that you already learned
The last options is, which makes the client refresh the market data more often:
- Automatically Refresh Market Data: refresh market data every so often
How to execute a trade
This guide will teach you how to set buy and sell orders by actually doing it. Follow these steps in order.
Basics recap
Let's go over the basics quickly again:
- Identify an item with a decent margin between the high buy and low sell (10-20%)
- Identify if the item has a decent daily volume, to see if it's active
- Create a buy order slighly higher price then the highest buy order
- Wait until the order is fulfilled
- Create a sell order at slighly lower price then the lowest sell
- Wait until the order is fulfilled
- Profit!
Creating a Buy Order
- View the item in the Market window, Market Data tab
- Take note of the high buy for your station, possibly nearby stations
- Press Place Buy Order button at the bottom
- If you are in space, then you must select from a list of stations
- Open the Advanced Buy Order window
- Location is the station where the Buy Order will be placed
- If in a station, the Location will be your current station
- You can click on this to change locations
- Set Bid Price to greater than the noted high buy, oftentimes +0.01
- Set Quantity to whatever volume you wish to trade
- Set Minimum if you wish to have a minimum volume per order, almost always leave at 1
- Set Duration to the amount of time you wish to wait for the order to be fulfilled
- Usually set to max (3 months)
- Press remember settings to make this the default
- Anything longer than how often you will update your orders is fine
- Set Range to how far you don't mind gathering the items, almost always leave at Station
- Remember that setting this further means you will need to do the hauling
- Base Broker's Fee is 1% of the total order value, 100 isk minimum
- Modified by Broker Relations skill
- Also modified by faction and corp standing
- Use corp account can be checked, but mostly leave this blank
- Using the corp account does use up your order limit
- Press Buy
Remember:
- To do this remotely, you need Procurement
Creating a Sell Order
- Right-click the item in your hangar and choose View Market Details
- If you are remote, find the item in your Assets window and right-click there
- Take note of the low sell for your station, possibly nearby stations
- Right-click the item again and choose Sell This Item
- Click on the Advanced button (defaults to Simple)
- Open the Advanced Sell Order window
- Set Ask Price to less than the noted low sell, oftentimes -0.01
- Set Quantity to the number you wish to sell in a single order, almost always all of them
- Set Duration to the amount of time you wish to wait for the order to be fulfilled
- Usually set to max (3 months)
- Check the remember settings button to make this the default
- Anything longer than how often you will update your orders is fine
- Base Broker's Fee is 1% of the total order value, 100 isk minimum
- Modified by Broker Relations skill
- Also modified by faction and corp standing
- Base Sales Tax is 1% of the total order value, 0.01 isk minimum
- Modified by Accouting skill
- Use corp account can be checked, but mostly leave this blank
- Using the corp account does use up your order limit
- Press Sell
Remember:
- To do this remotely, you need Marketing
Modifying an Order
- Open your Wallet window and go to the My Wallet tab, Orders sub-tab
- Recommended over Market window, My Orders tab so that you can see Market Details simultaneously
- Right-click the item you wish to update and choose View Market Details
- Compare the high buy if you are modifying a Buy Order
- Compare the low sell if you are modifying a Sell Order
- Right-click the item again and choose Modify Order
- Be very careful not to click Cancel Order
- Set a New Sell Price
- Check the price difference
- Check the price difference AGAIN
- If the price difference is too much, change the price
- Press OK
Remember:
- To do this remotely, you need Daytrading
- Flat Broker's Fee of 100 isk, not modified by skills
- You cannot modify any individual order more than every 5 minutes
Tips and tricks
Here are a few tips and tricks which apply to everyone who takes up station trading:
- Never reveal your trade secrets - people will steal them from you
- If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Analyse why this is, perhaps ask others, but in the beginning stay away from it. It can be a scam or a bait-order to get you into lowsec.
- Underneath the browse window in market is a button 'show only available' - turn this off
- Put EVERY item in the quickbar and then delete items you don't like, this makes it easy to keep track
- Integrate items in the station services window: ESC -> general settings -> station -> check 'merge items and ships into station panel '
- Diversify - don't put all your ISK in one item, also don't put all your money in high-risk trades
- Be careful while putting out orders - when you start you will have a low limit. For every item try to keep only 1 buy order open, and 1-2 sell orders, this way you won't go over your limit and keep oversight. Yes, this means you might need to wait until an order fulfills.
Station trading spreadsheet formulae
Station trading always requires math in order to know what you're doing. Google documents is a HUGE help with this.
File:Station trading spreadsheet.pdf
Since I couldn't put it on the wiki in an excel or open office file, I put it up as a pdf.
The formulae show how to use a spreadsheet to know your actual profit margin, daily earning potential and your overal wealth change.
A few notes:
- The brokers fee and tax will have to be modified when you have the proper skill
- You can copy the whole row, and then you only have to modify: name - buy - sell - daily quantity
- Actual wealth is hard to keep track of, but the most common formula is: buy orders outstanding + sell orders outstanding + cash
- Always go for a low quantity sold per day, it's better to not overestimate your market share
- The truncate function is very handy to keep oversight, it is: =TRUNC(formula, digits after the dot)
