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'''Trading''' is the act of buying and selling items within Eve.
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{{related class|Trade (CORE class)}}
  
== Introduction  ==
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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.
  
There are many recordings of Uni trading classes available on the forums. A few examples are listed below:
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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.
  
*[http://content.alexsmith.im/eve-recordings/EVE_Trading_101_Monday_10_May_2010_1900-VBR_L9.mp3 Trading 101 - Lompster] (Basics of trading, some emphasis on station and wartime trading)
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Each region has its own regional market. Each station and [[Upwell structures|Upwell structure]] with market service module has access to the market.
*[http://ds180.net/eve-uni/Eldiora%20-%20Trading%20101.mp3 Eldiora] (The basics of trading. Emphasis on interregional trade and getting started.)
 
*[http://ds180.net/eve-uni/Dr%20Deus%20-%20Trading.mp3 Dr Deus] (Introduction to trading. Emphasis on station trading, trading in Jita, Maximizing profit.)
 
*[http://ds180.net/eve-uni/Sun%20Win%20-%20Trading%20101.mp3 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.)
 
  
=== Advantages of trading ===
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== Advantages of market trading ==
 
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* 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 {{sk|Trade}}, without which you'll probably feel a little limited in the number of orders you can have open.  
*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.  
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* 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.   
*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.   
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* 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.
*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.
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* Scalable. With more money you can invest in more items making you more money.
 
 
== Trade Interfaces  ==
 
 
 
=== The Trade Window  ===
 
 
 
Possibly the simplest and least-used form of trading, the trade window requires you to be docked up with someone in the same station. It's mostly used to deliver items personally to a friend. The trade window is less useful in general since mass trading is not possible and scamming is common.
 
 
 
=== Contracts  ===
 
 
 
A [[contract]] is a public, formal agreement for work or goods, available through the contracts button on the [[NeoCom|NeoCom]]. Like the trade window, mass trading is hard and scamming is common. However, contracts have a couple of advantages. They can contain goods not normally available on the market, and finding an audience for your trading is much easier than through the trade window.
 
 
 
Alternatively, courier contracts can also add extra profit to hauling routes.
 
 
 
=== The Market  ===
 
 
 
This is where most trading in Eve takes place. 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. Markets are limited to the specific region they are in.  
 
  
 
== Skills ==
 
== Skills ==
 
[[Skills:Trade|Trade skills]] can be divided into four groups:  
 
[[Skills:Trade|Trade skills]] can be divided into four groups:  
*Skills that increase maximum number of active orders orders: Trade, Retail, Wholesale, Tycoon.
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* 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.
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* Skills that allow you to buy and sell things remotely: Marketing, Procurement, Daytrading, Visibility.
*Skills that reduce trading overhead: Accounting, Broker Relations, Margin Trading.
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* Skills that reduce trading overhead: Accounting, Broker Relations, Advanced Broker Relations
*Skills that increases maximum number of outstanding contracts: Contracting and Corporation Contracting.
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===Order Skills===
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Skills that increase the number of market slots:<br>
With no trade skills a character has can set up 5 simultaneous orders.
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With no trade skills a character can set up 5 simultaneous orders.
*{{sk|Trade|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 4 additional orders per level.
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* {{sk|Trade|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 4 additional orders per level.
*{{sk|Retail|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 8 additional orders per level.
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* {{sk|Retail|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 8 additional orders per level.
*{{sk|Wholesale|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 16 additional orders per level.
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* {{sk|Wholesale|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 16 additional orders per level.
*{{sk|Tycoon|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 32 additional orders per level.
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* {{sk|Tycoon|mult=yes|price=yes}} – grants 32 additional orders per level.
 
With all these skills trained to level 5 character can manage up to 305 orders.
 
With all these skills trained to level 5 character can manage up to 305 orders.
===Remote Skills===
 
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.
 
*{{sk|Marketing|mult=yes|price=yes}} – allows to setup sell orders remotely. Ranges:
 
**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
 
*{{sk|Procurement|mult=yes|price=yes}} – allows to setup buy orders remotely. Ranges are the same as for Marketing skill.
 
*{{sk|Daytrading|mult=yes|price=yes}} – allows to change orders remotely. Ranges are the same as for Marketing skill.
 
*{{sk|Visibility|mult=yes|price=yes}} - 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. Ranges are the same as for Marketing skill.
 
  
===Overhead Reduction skills===
 
*{{sk|Accounting|mult=yes|price=yes}} - reduces the transaction tax rate by 10% per level from 2% to 1% at level 5.
 
*{{sk|Broker Relations|mult=yes|price=yes}} – reduces the broker fee collected on market orders in NPC stations by subtracting a flat 0.1% per level from 3% to 2.5% at level 5. This fee can also be affected by standings between the trader and the corporation that owns the station.
 
*{{sk|Margin Trading|mult=yes|price=yes}} – decreases amount of ISK you have to place in buy orders for 25% per level. The remainder will be drawn from character’s wallet when someone actually sells you goods. Escrowed values are:
 
**level 0: 100% – The full ISK amount is removed from your wallet when the buy order is set up
 
**level 1: 75%
 
**level 2: 56.25%
 
**level 3: 42.18%
 
**level 4: 31.64%
 
**level 5: 23.73%
 
  
===Contract Skills===
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Skills that allow buying and selling remotely:<br>
*{{sk|Contracting|mult=yes|price=yes}} – increases the maximum number of contracts by 4 per level up to 21 at level 5.
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* {{sk|Marketing|mult=yes|price=yes}} – allows to setup sell orders remotely.
*{{sk|Corporation Contracting|mult=yes|price=yes}} – increases the number of concurrent corporation/alliance contracts you can make on behalf of your corporation by 10 per level up to 60 at level 5.
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* {{sk|Procurement|mult=yes|price=yes}} – allows to setup buy orders remotely. The range of these buy orders are controlled by {{sk|Visibility}} skill. E.g. with level 5 {{sk|Procurement}} skill orders can be set up anywhere in the region, but with level 0 of {{sk|Visibility}} they will be limited to a station where they are set.
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* {{sk|Daytrading|mult=yes|price=yes}} – allows to managing orders remotely.
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* {{sk|Visibility|mult=yes|price=yes}} - 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.
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** level 0: limited to current station
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** level 1: anywhere within current solar system
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** level 2: 5 jumps
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** level 3: 10 jumps
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** level 4: 20 jumps
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** level 5: entire region
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* 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.  
  
== 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]].  
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Skills that reduce overhead:
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* {{sk|Accounting|mult=yes|price=yes}} - reduces the sales tax by 11% per level from 8% to 3.6% at level 5.
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* {{sk|Broker Relations|mult=yes|price=yes}} – 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.
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* {{sk|Advanced Broker Relations|mult=yes|price=yes}} - reduces the relist fee paid when updating order price by 5 percentage points per level (10% reduction per level).
  
=== Hauling  ===
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== Taxes ==
  
Hauling is the act of transporting goods between stations for profit. 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. Interestingly, there are a lot of trade goods that exist only to be hauled between NPC stations. Finding good trade routes is hard (and changes on a daily basis), so most players use an external tool such as [[Using EVE-Central to haul profitably|Eve-Central]] or [http://code.google.com/p/navbot/ Navbot]. 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.  
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Any time market is used there are taxes<ref>[https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/restructuring-taxes-after-relief Restructuring Taxes After Relief][2021-10-19] For older tax changes see "A long, long time ago..." elsewhere on this page.</ref> that need to be paid. There are three different taxes that need to be paid: Broker's fee, sales tax and relist fee.
  
Skills:
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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.
  
*'''Racial Industrial''' skill for beginner ship usage
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=== Broker's fee ===
*{{sk|Hull Upgrades}} to use Expanded Cargoholds.
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'''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 the fee is not paid back. The minimum broker's fee is 100 ISK.
  
Guides:
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In NPC stations the base broker's fee is 3%. The broker fee can be reduced with {{sk|Broker Relations}} skill and [[NPC standings]].
  
*[[Creating an Alt Hauler]]
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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.
*[[Using EVE-Central to haul profitably]]
 
*[[Hauling 101]], [[Advanced Hauling]]
 
*[[Making Money with Hauling - Level 4 Cargo Missions]]
 
*[http://classes.eve-ivy.com/Disco%20Uncertainty%20-%20The%20Dark%20Side%20of%20Eve.mp3 The Dark Side of Eve] - A discussion on suicide ganking and pirate tactics. Firmly recommended listening.
 
*[[Known pirate systems]] - Avoid these.
 
  
=== Station Trading  ===
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The equation for NPC broker fees is<ref name="brokerfee">[https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203218962-Broker-Fee-and-Sales-Tax Helpdesk: Broker Fee and Sales Tax]</ref>
  
Station trading is like hauling, but without the hauling ship! Instead of buying low and then taking the goods to where you can sell high, you buy low and sell high ''without'' moving the goods.
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:<math> \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>
  
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. Another example is trade books that are given during the tutorials - if players have one and don't need it, they just want to dump it for ISK. On the other hand, players searching for one will pay quite a bit more since they can't get it anywhere else.  
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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%.
  
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!
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In player owned [[Upwell structures|Upwell structure]] markets the broker's fee is set by the structure owner and is not affected by any skills. The owner may set different fee for different standing levels. half of the paid broker's fee goes to the wallet of the corporation that owns the structure. The minimum broker's fee in player owned structure is 1%.
  
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!
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=== Relist fee ===
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When an order is modified you will need to pay more taxes. Ingame this tax is misleadingly called broker's fee but it is different from the broker's fee described above.
  
====Station Trading Skills====
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The relist fee is calculated as
Station trading is all about volume. Your margins are going to be 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%.
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:<math> \text{Relist fee} = ( 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{Order total change}, 0)</math>
  
Other skills you'll want to familiarize yourself with include:
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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.
  
*{{sk|Trade}}, {{sk|Retail}}, {{sk|Wholesale}} and {{sk|Tycoon}}: These skills increase the number of open market orders you may have.
 
*{{sk|Procurement}}, {{sk|Marketing}}, {{sk|Daytrading}} and {{sk|Visibility}}: These skills allow you to buy, sell and modify orders in stations other than your current one.
 
*{{sk|Margin Trading}}: This skill allows you to reduce the amount of escrow required when putting in a buy order, effectively letting you place buy orders for more money than you actually have.  (But you still need the ISK to be available when the Buy order goes through.)
 
*{{sk|Social}}, {{sk|Connections}}: Increases your standing so you pay less in taxes. Caveat: Broker fees are based on your ''base'' faction and corporate standing. The Connections skill does ''not'' affect broker fees paid on an order.
 
  
Guides:
 
  
*[http://eve-files.com/dl/251499 Guide to Making ISK Part 4: Titan Production] [https://docs.google.com/a/mailsort.info/file/d/0BywKzjZACDzNN2Q5MzJiNjItYWUzNy00MzljLThlYzUtZTAyNTVhMjdkZWYx/edit?hl=en_US Notes]: Excellent station trading guides by Eve trillionaire Sinqlaison
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Examples:
*[http://rapidshare.com/files/385410126/StationTrading.mp3 Station Trading 101][[Station Trading 101|(notes)]] and [http://rapidshare.com/files/385411004/StationTrading2.mp3 102][[Station Trading 102|(notes)]]: classes by Turhan Bey
 
*[[Identifying items for trade]]
 
*[http://soundcloud.com/alexkal1/irdalth-delrars-impromtu Irdalth Delrar's Impromtu Station Trading Guide]
 
  
=== Refining  ===
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You have a sell order for 13000x tritanium at 6.00 ISK each.<br>
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You have already sold 3000x tritanium so there are 10000x tritanium left in the order. This is total of 60000 ISK.<br>
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You increase the price to 7.00 ISK each. The new total is 70000 ISK.<br>
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Your broker's fee after skills and standing is 1.88%. Your Advanced broker relations level is 4 so your relist fee is<br>
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(0.5 - 0.06 × 4) × 0.0188 × 70000 + 0.0188 × ( 70000 ISK - 60000 ISK ) = 530.16 ISK
  
Basically, refining for profit means training up some refining skills, getting good standing with your current station's corp and then refining ore bought on the market. Most ore on the market is sold by miners without refining skills or who don't know better, so the margins are usually pretty good.
 
  
Skills:
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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.
  
*{{sk|Reprocessing}}, {{sk|Reprocessing Efficiency}} - Increases your base refine amount.  
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You are trading in a structure with 1% broker's fee. Your advanced broker relations level is 0.
*{{sk|Social}}, {{sk|Connections}} - Increases your standing so the station takes less ore.
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You have a buy order for 1000x item A for 1k ISK each.<br>
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you update the order to 10k ISK each.<br>
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You will need to pay 140k isk taxes ( 0.01 × 9000000 + 0.5 × 0.1 × 10000000 = 140000 ).<br>
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If you just create new order you need to pay 100k ISK taxes ( 0.01 × 10000000 = 100000 ).
  
Guides:
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=== Sales tax ===
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When an item is sold on the market the seller will also pay sales tax. The base transaction tax is 8% and is reduced by 11% per level in {{sk|Accounting}} (3.6% at max skills).
  
*[[Refining]]
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:<math> \text{Sales tax %} = 8\% - 0.88\% \times \text{Accounting level}</math>
*[http://eve.podzone.net/refining.php Refining effiency calculator] / [http://eve.battleclinic.com/ore_compression_calculator.php Ore compression calculator]
 
  
=== Speculation  ===
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Sales tax is always paid to NPC corporation Secure Commerce Commission (SCC).
  
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.
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{{expansion past|width=45%
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|[https://www.eveonline.com/article/ptgdti/patch-notes-for-june-2019-release 2019-08-01]: Market sales taxes and broker fees have changed:
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* Maximum Sales Tax increased from 2% to 5%
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* Maximum Brokers Fee increase for NPC stations from 3% to 5%
  
== Tips and Tricks  ==
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Tax associated skills have been changed:
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* {{Sk|Accounting}} – Increase in reduction of sales tax from 10% per level to 11% per level
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* {{Sk|Broker Relations}} – Increase in reduction of costs associated with setting up a market order from 0.1% per level to 0.3% per level
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See also [https://www.eveonline.com/article/pvewgz/updates-to-sales-taxes-and-brokers-fees Devblog: Updates to Sales Taxes & Brokers Fees]
  
As with other aspects of Eve, the first rule of trading is to never invest what you can't afford to lose.  
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[https://www.eveonline.com/article/q67fqo/broker-relations 2020-03-10] Relist fee added.
  
=== 0.01 ISK-ing ===
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[https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/the-grand-heist-now-live 2021-07-27]:
Once you get into trading, you will notice that a lot of people tend to over/undercut you by just 0.01 ISK per unit. Quite a few new players seem to have a problem with this - often getting annoyed to the point where they radically change their orders, slashing huge chunks off their profits. However, a more useful way to look at the 0.01-isking is that it is simply the game mechanism by which a logged on and active trading player has the advantage over logged off or AFK traders. Over or undercutting your competitors by just 0.01 ISK is precisely how this is achieved. So when someone else over/undercuts you by just 0.01 ISK, they are just getting their turn at the front of the queue. If you are there, updating your orders, you can simply update your orders and it is back to your turn to be at the front of the queue... On the other hand if you are not there, or not logged on, don't get so bent out of shape when someone that ''is'' active happens to be reaping the rewards.
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Market sales taxes and broker fees have changed. For three months Sales Tax and Brokers Fee's were cut in half as part of the "Grand Heist" release.
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* Maximum Sales Tax decreased from 5% to 2.5%
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* Maximum Brokers Fee decreased from 5% to 2.5%
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* Relist fee discount increased from 5% to 6%
  
And when you start doing some 0.01-isking of your own, try using your mouse-wheel to bump your price. You might like it, specially since it can be quite quick once you get used to it.
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[https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-version-19-09 2021-10-19]:
 +
Market sales taxes and broker fees have changed:
 +
* Maximum Sales Tax increased from 2.5% to 8%
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* Maximum Brokers Fee increased from 2.5% to 3%
 +
}}
  
Of course, sometimes the market for a particular item is simply unrealistic, or maybe you need your trades to go through quickly for some reason - a radical price change might be called for, but a good trader will have identifiable reasons for making such a change, rather than it just being an emotional "''I'll show you!''" response to being 0.01-isked.
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== Trading using the Market==
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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]].  
  
=== Finding items that are good to trade ===
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=== Station Trading ===
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Station trading is trading in its most basic form. You buy low and sell high.
  
There is an incredibly simple 3-step plan for finding good trading items:  
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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.
  
#Click on a market category, and start looking at the orders and market details for each item
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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!
#Switch to another category, and keep looking at each item.
 
#Look at items some more.
 
  
With that said, it's important to know what you're looking for, and hopefully the [[How to identify items to trade|burger method]] and the tips on this page should be enough. Generally, for station trading, you want to find items that:
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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!
  
*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.
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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.
*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. Hopefully 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.  
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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).
  
Remember to diversify between different items so that if your market breaks down you don't lose all your money.
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Guides:
  
'''Alternatively an EVE University member has created a dynamic TradeBook that provides real-time market data on any EVE item, so long as the API calls to EVE market-central are working (and they usually are - as of June 14th, 2016, CCP deployed a massive update that greatly increased the speed at which market data is updated).
+
* [https://eve-files.com/media/corp/kinisd/e-uni_the_guide_to_making_isk_part_4.mp3 Guide to Making ISK Part 4: Titan Production] [https://docs.google.com/a/mailsort.info/file/d/0BywKzjZACDzNN2Q5MzJiNjItYWUzNy00MzljLThlYzUtZTAyNTVhMjdkZWYx/edit?hl=en_US Notes]: Excellent station trading guides by EVE trillionaire Sinqlaison
You can find the TradeBook in the EVE University Forum under the Research, Production, and Trade tab.
+
* [[Identifying items for trade]]
Click [http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=99347 here] to access the document.'''
+
* [http://soundcloud.com/alexkal1/irdalth-delrars-impromtu Irdalth Delrar's Impromtu Station Trading Guide]
  
<br>
+
=== 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.
  
=== Trading Math  ===
+
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 [[Using EVE-Central to haul profitably|Eve-Central]] or [http://code.google.com/p/navbot/ Navbot]. 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.
  
Like almost all of Eve there is math. Fortunately most of the math in trading is basic math and/or the game does the math for you.  If you want to find out how much you will be paying or selling an item please use the following equation.  
+
See [[Hauling]] for more details on moving items from one place to another.
  
'''X'''=The amount of units you want to buy or sell
+
Guides:
  
'''U'''=The price of one unit of what your trying to buy or sell
+
* [[Creating an Alt Hauler]]
 +
* [[Using EVE-Central to haul profitably]]
 +
* [[Advanced Hauling]]
 +
* [[Known pirate systems]] - Avoid these.
  
'''P<sub>1</sub>'''=The overall cost of all the units you want to sell
+
=== 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.
  
'''P<sub>2</sub>'''<sub></sub>=The overall cost of the units you want to buy
+
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.
  
'''B'''=The broker percentage in decimal form
+
== 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.
  
'''E'''=The amount that you will get after a sell
+
===Finding items that are good to trade===
 +
There is an incredibly simple 3-step plan for finding good trading items:
  
'''A'''=The amount you will have to pay to buy something
+
# Click on a market category, and start looking at the orders and market details for each item
 +
# Switch to another category, and keep looking at each item.
 +
# Look at items some more.
  
<br>
+
With that said, it's important to know what you're looking for, and hopefully the [[How to identify items to trade|burger method]] and the tips on this page should be enough. Generally, for station trading, you want to find items that:
  
'''X * U = P<sub>1</sub>'''
+
* 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.
  
'''P<sub>1</sub> - (P<sub>1</sub> * B) = E'''
+
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.  
 
 
<br> '''X * U = P<sub>2</sub>'''
 
 
 
'''P<sub>2</sub> + (P<sub>2</sub> * B) = A'''
 
 
 
<br> So if you were buying PLEX for 100 isk each and you want 100 PLEX the amount you would have to pay after a 10% broker fee is 11,000 in isk. The equation for this is below.
 
 
 
<br>
 
 
 
'''100 * 100 = 10000'''
 
 
 
'''10000 + (10000 * .1) = 11000'''
 
  
<br>
+
Remember to diversify between different items so that if your market breaks down you don't lose all your money.
  
And if you want to sell the same PLEX for the same price and amount and same brokers fee you will get 9000 isk and the equation will look like this:
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===Trend lines===
 
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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.  
<br>
 
 
 
'''100 * 100 = 10000'''
 
 
 
'''10000 - (10000 * .1) = 9000'''
 
 
 
<br>
 
 
 
=== 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.  
 
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.  
Line 235: Line 197:
 
Lastly here is another [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v72zMtO3Mk video that shows you how the trend line works on line graphs.]
 
Lastly here is another [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v72zMtO3Mk video that shows you how the trend line works on line graphs.]
  
<br>
+
== References ==
 
+
<references />
=== Scams to avoid  ===
 
 
 
*Trade routes or courier contracts might be set up by pirates - a camp could be waiting on one of the jumps on the route to collect your ship, their goods and the collateral.
 
*Courier contracts might be set up to deliver to a player-owned station where you do not have docking rights.
 
 
 
A good way to avoid courier contract scams is to only accept contracts for routes you were planning on hauling anyway, and to not accept contracts to player owned stations.
 
 
 
=== Trading Cost Modifiers  ===
 
 
 
*{{sk|Broker Relations}} [Req: Trade 2] reduce base broker fee by 0.1% per level
 
*{{sk|Accounting}} [Req: Trade 4]: reduces sales tax by 10% per level
 
*{{sk|Margin Trading}} [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: 3% of the total order (2.5% at max skills), modified by standings. Whenever each unit gets sold, the seller will pay 2% of the sell price as a [[Tax#Sales_tax|sales tax]] (1% at max skills).  The fees show up in the wallet journal as "Brokers Fee" and "Transaction Tax".
 
 
 
So the typical station trader with zero standings will pay 3% of the order price as fees/taxes, 2.5% at max skills. This is important to take into account when calculating your profit, but of course the standings below can change that further.
 
 
 
==== Standings  ====
 
 
 
[[Faction 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 1/3 more than corp standings. Note that the ''unmodified'' standing is used for the calculation. The exact formula is:
 
 
 
:''BrokerFee&nbsp;% = 3%-(0.1%*BrokerRelationsLevel)-(0.03%*FactionStanding)-(0.02%*CorpStanding)''
 
 
 
With no skills or standing the broker fee is 3%. With 10 faction and corp standing, the broker fee is reduced to 2.5%. With broker relations V and perfect standing the fee is further reduced to 2%
 
  
 
[[Category:Trade]]
 
[[Category:Trade]]

Revision as of 10:13, 1 September 2022

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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 four 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 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 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 a station where they are set.
  • Daytrading (1x, 15M ISK) – allows to managing 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 market is used there are taxes[1] that need to be paid. There are three different taxes that need to be paid: Broker's fee, sales tax 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.

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 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 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 NPC broker fees is[2]

[math] \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 set by the structure owner and is not affected by any skills. The owner may set different fee for different standing levels. half of the paid broker's fee goes to the wallet of the corporation that owns the structure. The minimum broker's fee in player owned structure is 1%.

Relist fee

When an order is modified you will need to pay more taxes. Ingame this tax is misleadingly called broker's fee but it is different from the broker's fee described above.

The relist fee is calculated as

[math] \text{Relist fee} = ( 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{Order total change}, 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 13000x tritanium at 6.00 ISK each.
You have already sold 3000x tritanium so there are 10000x tritanium left in the order. This is total of 60000 ISK.
You increase the price to 7.00 ISK each. The new total is 70000 ISK.
Your broker's fee after skills and standing is 1.88%. Your Advanced broker relations level is 4 so your relist fee is
(0.5 - 0.06 × 4) × 0.0188 × 70000 + 0.0188 × ( 70000 ISK - 60000 ISK ) = 530.16 ISK


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 structure with 1% broker's fee. Your advanced broker relations level is 0. You have a buy order for 1000x item A for 1k ISK each.
you update the order to 10k ISK each.
You will need to pay 140k isk taxes ( 0.01 × 9000000 + 0.5 × 0.1 × 10000000 = 140000 ).
If you just create new order you need to pay 100k ISK taxes ( 0.01 × 10000000 = 100000 ).

Sales tax

When an item is sold on the market the seller will also pay sales tax. The base transaction tax is 8% and is reduced by 11% per level in Accounting (3.6% at max skills).

[math] \text{Sales tax %} = 8\% - 0.88\% \times \text{Accounting level}[/math]

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

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-Central or Navbot. 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. ^ Helpdesk: Broker Fee and Sales Tax