Trading

Trading has different aspects in EVE as you can see from the content of this page. Essentially, you buy at low prices and sell at high prices. Even if you're not a dedicated trader, you may still want to do the easiest trading interactions in EVE: buying ships, weapons and ammo for your own use and selling stuff you collected on your missions. Many points are already mentioned in Eve's official wiki here. So not everything will be mentioned in here if it exists there.

MP3 classes

The things written here are not my own invention. Though my experiences proofed them. If you dont feel like reading you can take mp3 classes:

• of Eldiora (The basics of trading. Emphasis on interregional trade and getting started.)
• of Dr Deus (Introduction to trading. Emphasis on station trading, trading in Jita, Maximizing profit. --> this is my favourite)
• of Sun Win (Buy and Sell orders. Creating a Trade Alt. Buying Low, selling high. Trade via hauling. Details of the Market system, Market analysis. Recommended Skills.)

Character & Trading Alt

In the beginning of the game you should think about what type of character you want to become in EVE. The serious trader will have many of the trade skills up to level 4 or 5. The ultimate trader will reach Tycoon lvl IV and train up non prerequisites to IV, will spend 90 days training and 190 mil isk on skill books. Depending on the way you want to play this game you can choose whether you want to focus on trading, doing it only along the other things you do in EVE or you have an alt with whom you manage all market related actions. There are advantages and disadvantages in any of these options (this list might not be complete). So you have to find out what suits your needs best.

War Time

By the time you get involved in a war the first time in uni you will notice that it might be difficult to earn money since you are not allowed to do anything else than joining fleets or doing things within the station. That problem arises especially if you just recently joined or have a low skilled character regarding trading skills. There are two ways to work around this problem:

1. Train the skills that your character is able to do remote trading or
2. create an alt which you place in a trading hub (the most popular is in Jita) who is only there for Station Trading.

Market

In order to see the worth of your item or how much isk an item will cost you, bring the item up in the market window. It is important to know, that the market window shows only the region you are in. Even if you are at a gate to another region you can't see the market "behind this gate". So the same item can have an entirely different price in a nearby region than in the one you are. (Tip: Have an alt in adjacent regions to yours if possible for "price checks". Inter regional trading can be VERY profitable)

Selling & Buying

Whether you decide to become a trader, or merely sell excess stuff in your hangar or mission loot, using the market window will come into play almost daily. Taking a few minutes to learn the layout of the market window is critical. If you do not understand it properly, you run the risk of losing isk by paying too much for an item, or getting to little for it.

The top pane is a list of sellers. This list should be sorted by the price column, lowest price at top, highest on the bottom(this sorting is not by default, you must set it). The bottom pane is the list of buyers. The buyer list should be sorted by price, opposite of the sellers list, highest offer at the top, lowest on the bottom. The buyers that you can sell to at your current location will have a green bar background. Usually the guy offering more isk wants it delivered directly to their station or pretty close.

A trader's goal is simple. Buy low and sell high. The difference between the two amounts is referred to as the margin. Maintaining a profitable margin can be difficult if you encounter another trader that also has buy and sell orders up at the same time for the same item. Engaging in this activity and attempting to run the other trader off is referred to as market PvP(Tip: If you just sell mission loot, look at the best offer price and the lowest seller price. If there is a wide margin, you may be better off hanging onto the gear or refining it)

Mission Runners

Mission runners normally don't care much about prices to the stuff they collect since they make their money with the rewards they get from the agents. They just sell the things on their mission hub or at max haul the items within a region. But think of it: This mission hub may supply dozens of players with the same missions who collect the same things on their missions. So there are way too many items of the same kind in the market and prices fall. Just one region nearby the prices might (mostly are) much better for these mission items.

• Now if you are a mission runner think about selling collected stuff in a nearby region once in a while to make extra money.
• If you are a trader look for mission hubs buy stuff there at low prices and sell it high in nearby region or system where you know prices are way better.

What items to trade?

If you look for the item to trade --> this doesn't exist. Just go through the items with a systematic approach. The one I suggest here is the one I use not the "right" one. You can stop at every point (going through my explanation) when you find things you want to trade.

First check the items you would use to fly missions or PVP. Then check the T2 version of this item. Find similar items (by name (-> use search function in market window) or group they are in). "Jump" to equivalent items of other races. If you follow this for sure you will find an item to trade.

See also How to identify items to trade - a brilliant, entertaining and simple guide on how to use the market graph effectively to identify products with potential.

Station Trading

This is my favourite thing to do with my alt! Honestly, what I'm writing here is not all my invention but confirmed experiences. I'd strongly recommend taking Dr Deus trading class. Some things may be redundant others complementary. Well, station trading is basically the same as you do when you buy thins at one location at low and at another at high prices. The difference is - you do it in the same station. To be able to do so you certainly need a trading hub to place yourself. Obviously it's useless to be in a station where nothing - or only very few items are traded. Once you have chosen a station where you want to do station trading go to the market window and check the different items. Sort the market data for prices. In the upper window (seller) check that you have the lowest price at the top of the list and in the lower window (buyer) you want to see the highest price at the top. Now the difference between the highest buying price and the lowest selling price can be your profit. You can place orders which are just above the current highest price and everyone who want to sell things (ex. Mission runners) will sell it to you. Once you have the items in your stock you can sell them again at a price which is just below the currently lowest price (in the sellers window) and everyone who wants to buy that item will buy it from you. For more detailed information listen to Dr Deus class.

Volume matters

Especially on station trading you should always check the volume sold and bought each day. Have a look at the price history and take in account following points:

• the volume shown is traded within the whole region not only the station you are in.
• the volume includes buying and selling activities. This could mean, that manufaturer sell huge amounts of their products at prices that no one else can go below without loosing money. So it might happen, that you can place an order due to a good price difference between buying and selling orders but your buying order will never be filled. Always check in the history whether the highest buyer price is/was in the range of lowest and highest prices.
• the volume tells you how long it approximately takes to fill your order. If you place an order for 1000 items and only 10 per day are traded in average it would take you at least 100 days in average, provided that the traded volume is only used to fill the buyers orders (this hardly ever happens) and you are always the highest bidder (this also hardly ever happens). So you gotta get a feeling for these volumes.

According to Dr. Deus class which I can confirm according to my experience the Volumes can be devided in three groups:

1. <500 --> low volume item
2. 500 - 1,000 --> medium volume item
3. > 1,000 --> high volume item

The amounts for ammo are different!!

Volume, price and order balance

When you are trading you are looking for the largest price difference - but not only! We have talked about volume and price but there is another factor you have to pay attention. In the buyers window (as well as in the sellers window but there its not that crucial) you can see how many oper order there are to fill. Each line is one. This also means that you have the same amount of people behind these lines who want to have the item. The more orders there are the harder it gets to be the highest bidder cause all buyers log in at different times an put there order again at the top of the list by changing the price.

There is always a fee and taxes you have to pay when you are selling and buying stuff. Skills and standings can lower those costs. But the point here is that especially low price difference items with limited amount of volume can cause you more costs than you actually earn by selling them. So keep an eye on the calculation of the over all profit.

To sum up: volume, price and number of orders have to be in a balance that suits you way of playing. There is no golden rule in my opinion.

Skills

There are some skills that influence your trading capabilities. Depending on your needs you have to decide individually whether or not you want to train specific skills.

Basic Trading / Concurrent Order Limit Modifiers

• Trade (Rank 1): increases your total order limit by 4 per level
• Retail (Rank 2) [Req: Trade 2]: increases your total order limit by 8 per level
• Wholesale (Rank 4) [Req: Retail 5, Marketing 2]: increases your total order limit by 16 per level
• Tycoon (Rank 6) [Req: Wholesale 5, Marketing 4]: increases your total order limit by 32 per level

These skills allow you to have many orders concurrently posted to the market. The theoretical maximum for a maxed-out trader is 300. Most traders can get away with having significantly fewer.

Remote Trading

• Daytrading (Rank 1) [Req: Trade 4]: ability to change orders from a distance
• Marketing (Rank 3) [Req: Trade 2]: ability to set up selling orders from a distance
• Procurement (Rank 3) [Req: Marketing 2]: ability to set up buying orders from a distance
• Visibility (Rank 3) [Req: Procurement 4]: ability to set up buying orders covering one or more solar systems

Level 1 allows changes/creation of orders in or covering the same system. Level 2 increases the range to 5 jumps. Every following level doubles the range. Level 5 enables you change/create orders within or covering the current region.

These three skills are the "holy trinity" of remote trading. As long as you don't have a trading alt sitting in a station where you do your trading these skills are essential to be able to trade efficiently without actually having to move to a station.

Trading Cost Modifiers

• Broker Relations (Rank 2) [Req: Trade 2] reduce base broker fee by 5% per level
• Accounting (Rank 3) [Req: Trade 4]: reduces sales tax by 10% per level
• Margin Trading (Rank 3) [Req: Accounting 4]: reduces escrow requirement for buy orders by an additional 25% per level

Whenever you set up a buy or sell order, you will have to pay the broker fee: 1% of the total order (0.75% at max skills), modified by standings. Whenever each unit gets sold, you will pay 1% of the sell price as sales tax (0.5% at max skills). So the typical station trader with zero standings will pay 3% of the order price as taxes, 2% at max skills. This is important to take into account when calculating your profit.

Standings

Faction and corporation standings relevant to the station the orders are placed in, will have an effect on the broker fee. Faction standings contribute significantly more than corp standings. The exact formula is:

BrokerFee % = (1.000 % – 0.050 % × BrokerRelationsSkillLevel) / e ^ (0.1000 × FactionStanding + 0.04000 × CorporationStanding)

As you can see, with 10 faction and corp standing, the broker fee is reduced to 0.185%, saving you more than 1% through the buy and sell process.