Trading

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Market is the most popular system through which players can buy and sell items in New Eden. The other common systems are contracts and direct trades.

The market is essentially an automated list of item exchange contracts: buy orders and sell orders. Since orders can be partially filled and searched easily, it tends to be a lot more convenient than trading through contracts, although the basic principle is the same. Another advantage of the market is that it's easy to see the price and quantity that items are actually selling for, using the market details tab.

Each region has its own regional market. Each station and Upwell structure with market service module has access to the market.

Advantages of market trading

  • Easy to get started: You can start trading right away on a character with no skills, and the amount of skill training needed compared to other professions is fairly low. The only skill you really need to start with is Trade, without which you'll probably feel a little limited in the number of orders you can have open.
  • Easy to do during war: With a small investment in skills (Marketing, Procurement and Daytrading to level 2) you can easily station trade in one system while docked up in another, or use an alt to trade in other ways.
  • Time-flexible: A lot of trading happens while docked up, and it's easy to go AFK with no real danger most of the time. While this isn't true during hauling, good hauls tend to be fairly short and you can always dock up halfway through.
  • Scalable. With more money you can invest in more items making you more money.

Skills

Trade skills can be divided into three groups:

  • Skills that increase maximum number of active orders orders: Trade, Retail, Wholesale, Tycoon.
  • Skills that allow you to buy and sell things remotely: Marketing, Procurement, Daytrading, Visibility.
  • Skills that reduce trading overhead: Accounting, Broker Relations, Advanced Broker Relations


Skills that increase the number of market slots:
With no trade skills a character can set up 5 simultaneous orders.

  • Trade (1x, 30k ISK) – grants 4 additional orders per level.
  • Retail (2x, 125k ISK) – grants 8 additional orders per level.
  • Wholesale (4x, 35M ISK) – grants 16 additional orders per level.
  • Tycoon (6x, 125M ISK) – grants 32 additional orders per level.

With all these skills trained to level 5 a character can manage up to 305 orders.


Skills that allow buying and selling remotely:

  • Marketing (3x, 3.5M ISK) – allows to setup sell orders remotely.
  • Procurement (3x, 1.5M ISK) – allows to setup buy orders remotely. The range of these buy orders are controlled by the Visibility skill. E.g. with level 5 Procurement skill orders can be set up anywhere in the region, but with level 0 of Visibility they will be limited to the station where they are set.
  • Daytrading (1x, 15M ISK) – allows to manage orders remotely.
  • Visibility (3x, 7.5M ISK) - increases maximum range of remote buy orders, so sellers can fill such orders from any station with this range of the remote buy order. Every buy order can have own effective range limited to this skill.
    • level 0: limited to current station
    • level 1: anywhere within current solar system
    • level 2: 5 jumps
    • level 3: 10 jumps
    • level 4: 20 jumps
    • level 5: entire region

The info for these skills can be misleading. Sadly, these skills do not magically move goods around. For example, Procurement will not allow you to buy goods in a distant system and have them appear in your current station's hangar. What these skills do is allow you to buy and sell goods that are not in your current station/system. If you are a station trader, for example, you hang out somewhere else from your goods; this increases safety, because trade hubs tend to attract PvP action. Similarly, you can deliver your salvage to a trade hub then go back to missioning where the missions are, while still managing the sale of your salvage.


Skills that reduce overhead:

  • Accounting (3x, 5M ISK) - reduces the sales tax by 11% per level from 8% to 3.6% at level 5.
  • Broker Relations (2x, 125k ISK) – reduces the broker fee by 0.3 percentage points per level (10% reduction per level ignoring the standings). At level 5 this brings you from 3% to 1.5%. Also reduces the relist fee. This fee is also affected by standings between the trader and the corporation and faction that own the station. Has no effect when trading in player owned structures.
  • Advanced Broker Relations (3x, 20M ISK) - reduces the relist fee paid when updating order price by 5 percentage points per level (10% reduction per level).

Taxes

Any time the market is used there are taxes [1] that need to be paid. There are three different taxes: sales tax, broker's fee and relist fee.

A station trader with zero standings will pay between 5.1% (at max skills) and 11% of the order price as fees/taxes. This is important to take into account when calculating your profit, but of course the standings can change that further. With max skills and max standings a station trader will pay 4.6% of the order price as fees/taxes.

Sales tax

When an item is sold on the market the seller will also pay sales tax. The base sales tax is 4.5%[2] and is reduced by 11% per level in Accounting (2.03% at max skills). The sales tax shows up in the wallet as transaction tax.

[math] \displaystyle \text{Sales tax %} = 4.5\% * (1-(11\% \times \text{Accounting level})) [/math]

Sales tax is always paid to NPC corporation Secure Commerce Commission (SCC).

Broker's fee

Broker's fee is paid every time a sell or buy order with duration other than "immediate" is created. The broker's fee is a percentage value of the total value of the created market order. The broker's fee is paid immediately when the order is created. If the order is taken down or expires the fee is not paid back. The minimum broker's fee is 100 ISK.


In NPC stations the base broker's fee is 3%. The broker fee can be reduced with the Broker Relations skill and NPC standings.

Corporation standings contribute 2/3 of that of faction standings. Note that the unmodified standing is used for the calculation so skills that increase standings have no effect on broker's fees.

The equation for the NPC broker's fee percentage is[3]

[math] \displaystyle \text{Broker's fee %} = 3\% - 0.3\% \times \text{Broker Relations level} - 0.03\% \times \text{faction standing} - 0.02\% \times \text{corporation standing} [/math]

With no skills or standing the broker's fee is 3%. With broker relations V, the broker's fee is reduced to 1.5%. With 10 faction and corp (i.e. perfect) standing the fee is further reduced to 1%.


In player owned Upwell structure markets the broker's fee is a fixed SCC surcharge of 0.5% plus a percentage set by the structure owner and is not affected by any skills. The owner may set different fees for different standing levels. The minimum owner fee is 0% [4]. The minimum broker fee is 100 ISK.

[math] \displaystyle \text{Broker's fee %} = 0.5\% + \text{Owner %} [/math]


Leading to a broker's fee of:

[math] \text{Broker's fee} = \text{Market order value} \times \text{Broker's fee %} [/math]

Relist fee

When an order is modified you will need to again pay a broker's fee. This broker's fee is reduced by a relist discount with a base reduction of 50%. The relist discount can be increased by the Advanced Broker Relations skill.

The relist fee is calculated as[5]

[math] \text{Relist fee} = ( 100\% - ( 50\% + 6\% \times \text{Advanced Broker Relations level} ) ) \times \text{Broker's fee %} \times \text{New order value} + \text{Broker's fee%} \times \max ( \text{New order value} - \text{Old order value}, 0) [/math]

where Broker's fee % is same as when setting up the market order described in the above section. The minimum relist fee is 100 ISK.


Examples:

You have a sell order for 13,000x tritanium at 6.00 ISK each.

You have already sold 3,000x tritanium so there are 10,000x tritanium left in the order. For total order value of 60,000 ISK.
You increase the price to 7.00 ISK each. The new total order value becomes 70,000 ISK.
Your broker's fee % after skills and standing is 1.88%. Your Advanced Broker Relations level is IV so your relist fee is

[math] \displaystyle (100\% - ( 50\% + 6\% \times 4 ) ) \times 1.88\% \times 70,000 + 1.88\% \times max ( ( 70,000 - 60,000 ), 0 ) [/math]
[math] \displaystyle (100\% - ( 50\% + 24\% ) ) \times 1.88\% \times 70,000 + 1.88\% \times max ( ( 10,000 ), 0 ) [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 26\% \times 1.88\% \times 70,000 + 1.88\% \times 10,000 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 0.26 \times 0.0188 \times 70,000 + 0.0188 \times 10,000 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 342.16 + 188.00 = 530.16 \text{ ISK} [/math]
You have a sell order for 13,000x tritanium at 6.00 ISK each.

You have already sold 3,000x tritanium so there are 10,000x tritanium left in the order. For total order value of 60,000 ISK.
You decrease the price to 5.00 ISK each. The new total order value becomes 50,000 ISK.
Your broker's fee % after skills and standing is 1.88%. Your Advanced Broker Relations level is IV so your relist fee is

[math] \displaystyle (100\% - ( 50\% + 6\% \times 4 ) ) \times 1.88\% \times 50,000 + 1.88\% \times max ( ( 50,000 - 60,000 ), 0 ) [/math]
[math] \displaystyle (100\% - ( 50\% + 24\% ) ) \times 1.88\% \times 50,000 + 1.88\% \times max ( ( -10,000 ), 0 ) [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 26\% \times 1.88\% \times 50,000 + 1.88\% \times 0 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 0.26 \times 0.0188 \times 50,000 + 0.0188 \times 0 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 244.40 + 0 = 244.40 \text{ ISK} [/math]

In some cases it can cost more to modify an old order than it costs to take it down and set up a new order.

You are trading in a player structure with 1% broker's fee(0.5% SCC surcharge + 0.5% owners percentage). Your Advanced Broker Relations level is 0.

You have a buy order for 1,000x item A for 1k ISK each. For an order value of 1,000,000 ISK
you update the order to 10k ISK each. For an order value of 10,000,000 ISK
Relist fee:

[math] \displaystyle (100\% - ( 50\% + 6\% \times 0 ) ) \times 1\% \times 10,000,000 + 1\% \times max ( ( 10,000,000 - 1,000,000 ), 0 ) [/math]
[math] \displaystyle (100\% - 50\% ) \times 1\% \times 10,000,000 + 1\% \times max ( ( 9,000,000), 0 ) [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 50\% \times 1\% \times 10,000,000 + 1\% \times 9,000,000 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 0.5 \times 0.01 \times 10,000,000 + 0.01 \times 9,000,000 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 0.5 \times 0.01 \times 10,000,000 + 0.01 \times 9,000,000 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 50,000 + 90,000 = 140,000 \text{ ISK}[/math]

Broker fee:

[math] \displaystyle 1\% \times 10,000,000 [/math]
[math] \displaystyle 0.01 \times 10,000,000 = 100,000 \text{ ISK}[/math]

You will need to pay 140k ISK relist fee.
If you just create a new order you need to pay 100k ISK broker's fee.

Trading using the Market

The main method of trading is doing what other players can't be bothered to do: either they're too lazy or the opportunity cost is too big. Most market activity occurs in and around trade hubs.

Station Trading

Station trading is trading in its most basic form. You buy low and sell high.

Basically, you want to find items with a reasonable volume traded and a significant difference in buy and sell order prices within the same station. A large source of these types of items comes from NPC loot: players run missions, collect loot and just want to sell it for a quick buck, since they don't have the time or the Trade skills to set up sell orders for everything. On the other hand, players searching for one will pay quite a bit more since they can't get it anywhere else.

The simple rule of thumb is buy low and sell high. For station trading to be performed effectively, ensure that your sell order's gross profit minus your buy order's cost minus taxation still leaves a profit! Setting up buy and sell orders on multiple items minimizes risk of a market price crash on any one particular item. If you can make 20,000 ISK on an item and manage to trade 100 of these per day this will give you 2,000,000 ISK. Do this with 50 different products and this equates to 100,000,000 ISK per day!

Start small, reinvest, and you will soon see your total ISK grow very quickly. When you start working with billions of ISK you can trade higher priced items, which, in turn, can increase your margins and also price out some of the competition!

Station trading is all about volume. Your margins are often thin, and you'll need to save money everywhere you can. That means training Broker Relations and Accounting to 5.

Early in your trading career, these fractional percentages have a minimal impact i.e. if trained to level 5, you need to trade 667 million ISK of goods to earn back the 5 million ISK you spent on the Accounting skillbook. As you build your trading volume, however, these reductions are quite meaningful. Without getting into the math, training Broker Relations and Accounting to 5 will increase your profits by 11% (assuming you do not need to modify your offer).

Guides:

Cross region trading

Sometimes items have different values in different areas of space. You can buy low in one place and sell high in another place.

Basically, you buy some goods at one station, load them up into your hauling ship, carry them off to another station and sell them for profit. This works because most players don't have the ships or the time to move everything themselves. Finding good trade routes is hard (and changes on a daily basis), so most players use an external tool such as EVE Trade. However, there are usually certain routes that are profitable in general, such as hauling stuff from mission hubs, where mission runners dump their loots, to trading hubs where there is less supply.

See Hauling for more details on moving items from one place to another.

Guides:

Speculation

Speculation is the act of buying goods in the hope that their price will rise in the future. For example, PLEX prices can rise significantly during the summer holidays, so buying them earlier in the year and selling them during the summer can create a large profit. Speculation can also occur on patch changes or market stampedes.

Speculative market trading requires you to have good understanding on the wider EVE economy. Where do items come from, where do items go to, how does update on X affect item Y? Owning a crystal ball also helps.

Tips and Tricks

As with other aspects of EVE, the first rule of trading is to never invest what you can't afford to lose.

Finding items that are good to trade

There is an incredibly simple 3-step plan for finding good trading items:

  1. Click on a market category, and start looking at the orders and market details for each item
  2. Switch to another category, and keep looking at each item.
  3. Look at items some more.

With that said, it's important to know what you're looking for, and hopefully the burger method and the tips on this page should be enough. Generally, for station trading, you want to find items that:

  • have a high and fairly constant demand. You can check item demand by looking at the volume sold chart in the market details. While some items might have huge margins, if the volume sold is small or infrequent then there is much more risk associated with that item.
  • actually sell for the buy and sell orders listed. You can check this by looking at the market details and seeing whether the range of prices includes the current best buy and sell orders. The median price should be somewhere between the two.

Good items to trade are (depending on region and current market) meta-4 items (e.g. Arbalest launchers): they can't be produced and some of them have better or the same attributes as their T2 counterparts.

Remember to diversify between different items so that if your market breaks down you don't lose all your money.

Trend lines

Trend lines are used in the real world to help self brokers and stock brokers find out future events in the stock market, or more commonly known as a technical analysis. To use a trend line all you need to do is find a way to draw a line from peak to peak and trough to trough in the line graph on price history on an item. You will want to draw a line that hits at least 2 to 3 peaks and another that hits 2 to 3 troughs. This will tell you that the price should fall between the 2 lines and if the prices hits one of the lines or go a little past it then its time to buy or sell the item in EVE. The trick to this in both EVE and the real world is to do this and know what you're doing as fast and right as possible.

You should be able to look at a graph in 5 minutes and say if it's a good buy or sell for you if you're buying and selling short term. The only trick to using something is it must be straight. If worst comes to worst you can press print screen, paste the image into paint and make the trend line there but if you do this you will lose some valuable time.

Because there is so much information already out there here is a link that gets in detail on what you should do to make and read a trend line.

Lastly here is another video that shows you how the trend line works on line graphs.

References

  1. ^ Restructuring Taxes After Relief[2021-10-19] For older tax changes see "A long, long time ago..." elsewhere on this page.
  2. ^ Patch Notes: Version 22.01 Release 2024-07-25.1 - Marketplace taxes reduced to 4.5%. Down from 8%.
  3. ^ EVE help center: Broker Fee and Sales Tax
  4. ^ Patch notes: Version 21.05 Release 2023-06-21.1
  5. ^ EVE help center: Buy and Sell Orders
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