Market Trading 101

Ivar Strahm's Guide To Basic Market Trading In EVE Online

2008-12-24

Market Trading 101

In seeing an influx of new players in the Market Discussion forum, accompanied by a growing number of basic questions, I decided to put together a set of tutorials to help new players begin their careers as traders. Trading is a fun and exciting way to play EVE Online, and many consider it to be the best path to riches. Trade is especially adaptable to the schedules of a casual gamer, with many ways to make large amounts of ISK with relatively little time invested, once you get the hang of it. That said, it can satisfy even a hard-core gamer's desire for hours of entertainment every day.

This tutorial will focus on the very basics of trading. It will introduce the concept of trading in EVE, show you around the market window, explain buy orders and sell orders, and how to find profitable items to trade in. It is neither a comprehensive guide to market research, or a discussion of all the ways in which members of the community make money using the Market. Rather, it is an introduction to simple station trading designed to answer the most basic of questions and encourage further reading. If you have any experience in trading, this particular guide will likely show you very little that you don't already know.

I welcome any suggestions for future revisions, or other comments you may have. Please send them in an EVE Mail to “Ivar Strahm” and I'll give your ideas a good home.

Market Trading 101

In this guide you will learn...

What we mean when we say “Trading”.

The difference between “Trading” and “Trucking”.

How to use the Market window.

The Trader's Golden Rule (“Buy Low, Sell High”).

How to set up Buy and Sell Orders.

Simple Tips and Tricks.

Market Trading 101

What is “Trading”?

“Trading” means exchanging goods and services for profits. In EVE Online, this usually means buying or producing an item for one price and selling it for a higher price, thus allowing you to make ISK.

For the sake of this tutorial, we are going to limit our definition of trading to buying and selling items, such as modules, ammunition and ships, that we do not manufacture ourselves.

Market Trading 101

“Trading” versus “Trucking”

In EVE there are thousands of star systems and untold numbers of stations where items can be bought and sold. Whenever you buy and sell items, you are “Trading”. Whenever you move items to sell somewhere else, you are “Trucking” or “Hauling”.

Trading and trucking in EVE are closely related, but they are not the same thing. Many traders do not move or haul items from one station or system to another. They either confine their buying and selling to specific stations, or pay others to move items for them.

Market Trading 101

The Market Window

This tutorial will focus on trading items via the Market in EVE. This is the same interface that you have no doubt used to buy ships, modules and ammo, and sell loot that you have collected from NPCs.

The next few slides will introduce you to the Market window. You will likely be familiar with it, but I will introduce its basic elements, then tie them together for the discussion that will follow. I will assume you know how to find the Market button in the game client, and the basics of how to buy and sell items through the Market and your items hangar.

Market Trading 101

This is the Market window. On the left, you can see the list of the various categories of items on the market. In this example, we have selected “Light Scout Drones”.To the right, you can see the various items in this group. This is called the “Groups” view. From here, you can buy the various drones in this group.

Market Trading 101

Here, we have selected the “Warrior I” drone at the left, which changes the view on the right side of the window to the “Details” view for this item.The Details view is further divided into sell orders and buy orders.You might be used to buying items from the Groups view, but you will likely be using the Details view a lot more often when you begin trading.

Market Trading 101

Lets talk about the Details view. The top half of the Details panel (indicated by the red arrow) is the list of “Sell Orders” for our selection.Sell orders are stocks of items that people have put on the market for others to buy. Whenever you buy an item directly off the market (like from the Groups view), you are buying from a sell order.

Market Trading 101

Here is a closer look at the sell order list. Notice there are several columns, including “Jumps”, “Quantity” and “Price”. Clicking on a column header sorts the list by that column. Here, we have sorted the list by Price, allowing us to see that the cheapest price here is 3,890.00 ISK.

Market Trading 101

Take note of the “Location” column. When you buy from a sell order by right-clicking on it, you are buying that item at the location listed here. If you've been playing EVE for a while, you have almost certainly bought an item in a different station or system accidentally.

Market Trading 101

If you are in a busy region, you should see many different sell orders for the same item, in the same system and station.Systems with a lot of orders for the same items are generally called “Market Hubs”. In our example you can see many orders for Warrior I drones in “Hek”, the market hub for the Metropolis region.

Market Trading 101

The Market Is Divided According To Region

You should have noticed by now that the galaxy of EVE is divided into different regions, such as Heimatar, Metropolis and The Citadel. Whenever you browse the market, place orders and buy items you are restricted to viewing and using the market for your current region. If you are in Metropolis, for example, you cannot see or interact with the market in Heimatar.

Some items may be available in one region, but not in another. Or they may be being bought and sold for different prices.

Busy regions usually have a single system, called that region's Trade Hub, where players gather to buy and sell items. Some hubs include Hek, Amarr, Rens and Jita.

Market Trading 101

Here I've highlighted two sell orders for Warrior I drones in our station.The first order has 811 units for 3,890.00 each, and the second order has 173 units for 4,250.00 each.When you buy from a sell order, you ALWAYS buy from the cheapest order available at the location you select.

Market Trading 101

Buying From Sell Orders

This is an important fact that many players, new and old, do not understand. If there are two orders in the same station you will always buy from the cheapest order, but you will pay the price you select.

If you see one order for 100.00 ISK, and another order for 150.00 ISK, and you attempt to buy ten units from the 150.00 ISK order, you will pay 1,500.00 ISK, but will actually buy the items from the 100.00 ISK order, giving that seller 500.00 ISK more than he is asking.

When buying from sell orders, you can choose where to buy the items and what price you will pay, but you cannot choose which order in that station to buy from. You will always buy from the cheapest order.

Market Trading 101

At the bottom of the Details panel you will see the “Buy Orders” for this item. Buy orders are placed in stations just like sell orders. Whenever you right-click an item and sell it, you are selling it to a buy order. The buy order list is very similar to the sell order list, but there are a few key differences.

Market Trading 101

The buy order list has several columns in common with the sell order list, but there is one major addition, the “Range” column. When a buy order is placed, the buyer can choose how far away they are willing to buy the item.Orders that are highlighted in green in this list cover your current location.

Market Trading 101

Just like sell orders, buy orders have a “Price”. Whenever you sell an item to a buy order, you sell it to the HIGHEST bidder.Just like sell orders, you cannot choose who to sell to, only where to sell it and what price to sell it for.

Market Trading 101

If we had a Warrior I drone in our items hangar that we wanted to sell, we could right-click it and sell it to the buy order here for 653.11 ISK. We would not get the 5000.00 ISK listed because we are out of that order's range (the order is not green).

Market Trading 101

Now let's put some of this together. We know that whenever we sell an item by right-clicking on it, we sell to the highest BUY ORDER. When we buy an item from the Market, we buy from the lowest SELL ORDER. If you look at the price of these orders you will see that someone is buying Warrior I drones for 653.11 ISK each, and someone is selling the same drones for 3,890.00 ISK each. If these orders belong to the same person, he is making about 3,200.00 ISK per drone.

Market Trading 101

“The Trader's Golden Rule”

“The Trader's Golden Rule” is Buy Low, Sell High. As illustrated in our last example, if you decided to trade in Warrior I drones in Hek, you could make about 3,200.00 ISK for every drone you bought and sold. To do this you would place a BUY ORDER for a slightly higher price than the highest order within range. Once you bought a few drones, you would then put those drones up with a SELL ORDER for a slightly lower price than the lowest order in that station.

Thus, you are buying the items for a relatively LOW price and selling them for a relatively HIGH price. The difference between these prices is your profit.

Market Trading 101

Station Trading Basics

The simplest form of trading is “Station Trading”. This is when you place buy orders for items with a range of “Station” (meaning you will only buy items at the station where you place the order), then put the items you buy up for sale in the same station. Station trading is usually done in market hubs where there are many players to buy and sell items.

By limiting your buy and sell orders to one station, you eliminate the need to haul items between systems and stations.

The key is in finding items that you can sell, and that other people are willing to sell to you.

Market Trading 101

Station Trading Basics

In order to find such items, it is necessary to do some research. The various ways you can find good trades are beyond the scope of this guide, but if you have been playing EVE for any length of time, you will already know of at least a few items that you can trade in.

Think of those items you have bought yourself, such as weapons, shield boosters and ammunition. And then think of those items you have sold, such as the modules and ammo you might have looted from NPC pirates in belts or missions.

Look up these items on the market and see what people are buying and selling them for.

Market Trading 101

Let's set up a buy order for Warrior I's. To do that, we click the button that says “Place Buy Order” at the bottom of the window.Before we do this, we take note of the price of the highest buy order covering this station. In this case, it is 653.11 ISK.

Market Trading 101

This is the Buy Order window. There's a lot of information here that we need to look at, and several options for us to set.First, note that the window tells us that we are buying “Warrior I”. It also tells us our location (Hek VIII – Moon 12 – Boundless Creation Factory) and it suggests a “Bid Price”.We also see a few prices here that tell us the regional average and best prices.Further down, we see entries for “Quantity”, “Minimum”, “Duration” and “Range”.For this tutorial, we are only going to consider a few of these elements.

Market Trading 101

First, we adjust our bid price to be sightly higher than the current highest bid price covering our station. The best price here is 653.11, so we have set our price to 654.00.

Remember, the less we pay for our items, the more money we can make. Sometimes it makes sense to set a price much higher than what is currently being offered, but for now we want to buy this item for as little as possible.

Market Trading 101

We've also adjusted our Quantity. By default, it suggests buying only one unit of the item. We have changed this so that we'll buy ten.

Note that next to our Quantity is a field called “Minimum”. This is the minimum number of the item we wish to buy at a time. When it is set to one, we will buy any number of items at a time, up to our Quantity. If we set the minimum to, say, five, we will only buy from people willing to sell us at least five drones at once. This is useful when you wish to buy items in certain quantities, such as ammo or minerals.

For now, we'll leave the minimum at one.

Market Trading 101

Here, we can see two figures. A “Broker's Fee”, which is shown as “100.00 ISK (Minimum)”, and our “Total”, which is 6,640.00 ISK.

The total is how much ISK will be taken from our wallet and held aside in “Escrow” to complete the order.

Generally, whenever you set up a buy order, the money needed to buy the number of items you want, at the price you bid, is taken from your wallet immediately and placed in a holding area called “Escrow”. If you should cancel the order before it's filled, you will get this money back, minus the broker's fee.

Market Trading 101

Broker's Fees and Sales Tax

Whenever you place an order, either buying or selling, you have to pay a “Broker's Fee”. The broker's fee starts at 1.0% of the order's value (with a minimum of 100.00 ISK) and can be lowered through personal standings to the corporation that owns the station you place your order in, and through the skill “Broker Relations”. You only pay a broker's fee when you place an ORDER, not when you buy directly from, or sell to, an existing order.

Also, every time you sell an item, either through a sell order or by selling to a buy order, you pay “Sales Tax”. Sales tax also starts at 1.0% of the item's value, and can be lowered through the skill “Accounting”.

Market Trading 101

After setting our price and the quantity we wish to buy, we can adjust the values for “Duration” and “Range”. There is no penalty or additional cost to setting the order to have a long duration, so we've set the duration of this order to the maximum, which is three months.

We've also set our range to “Station”, so that we will only buy items sold to us here. If we wanted, we could set the range to “System”, to buy items sold in any station in the current star system, or to a certain number of jumps to cover neighboring system, or even set the order to buy the item anywhere in the entire region.

Finally, once we've reviewed the order to make sure we haven't made any mistakes, we click the “Buy” button to save the order.

Market Trading 101

Once we have placed our order, we can see it in the buy order list.

Now, whenever someone sells a Warrior I drone in this station by right-clicking on it, they will be selling to our order.

Market Trading 101

To check our orders, we can click on the tab in the Market window labeled “My Orders”.

Market Trading 101

Here we can see all of our sell and buy orders, even if they are in different regions.

In the “Buying” list, we see our order for “Warrior I” drones.

Market Trading 101

In the buy order list, we can see the Type of item we are buying, how many are left to buy of the quantity we wanted (in this case, we are still looking for all ten of the items we are bidding on), our bid price, the location where we placed the order, the range and the minimum volume.

If we wanted to change our price, we could right-click this order and choose “Modify Order”. We could then adjust the price.

Market Trading 101

Inventory And Sell Orders

We've just placed a buy order for ten Warrior I drones in our station. Assuming people have some to sell, and that no one outbids us by placing a buy order for a higher price, we should have a few to sell when we check in later. Whenever someone sells to us, the item is placed in our items hangar in the station where they sold it. Since we put our order up with a range of “Station”, this will be the same station where we placed the order. When an item is sold to us, our wallet will flash and show that ISK has been taken out of escrow.

The items in your hangar that you can sell are your “Inventory”. You can sell these items via sell orders as we'll see next.

Market Trading 101

Let's say we have checked back after a few hours and found that we have puchased all ten of the drones we were asking for, and we now want to sell them.

First, we find the item we wish to sell in our items hangar, then right-click on it and choose “Sell This Item”, just as you've probably done before.

When you do this, you will see a window that looks like this. If we wanted to sell the item to a buy order, we'd click the “Sell” button.

Since we want to place a sell order, though, we will click the “Advanced” button.

Market Trading 101

Just like with a buy order, the sell order window contains a number of options and gives us some additional information.

We are given a default “Ask Price”, told the regional averages, given a quanity (which defaults to the total number of items in the stack we right-clicked on), given a chance to set a duration and told the total worth of the order as well as the fees and taxes we'll pay.

Market Trading 101

Here, we've changed our ask price to be just under the best price at this station. In this case, we're asking for 3,889.00 ISK. Again, there might be some times when you will want to undercut the best price by a larger amount, but the higher our price, the more money we will make.

Below, you will see that we are being charged a broker's fee for placing the order, and we are told how much we will pay in sales tax.

The total, shown in green, is how much money the entire order is worth.

Once you are certain you've made no mistakes, click the “Sell” button to place the order. The items are removed from your hangar and the broker's fee is taken from your wallet.

Market Trading 101

If we go back to the Details view, we can see our sell order.

Anyone buying Warrior I's in this station will buy from our order as long as we have the best price.

Market Trading 101

If we go back to “My Orders”, we will see our sell order listed, just like our buy order was listed before.

Whenever someone buys from our order, the ISK will go into our wallet (minus the sales tax) and the quantity will change to show us how many of our original quantity is left to sell.

Just as with a buy order, we can modify the price of our sell orders by right-clicking them.

Market Trading 101

Congratulations!

You have just learned how to use the Market window to find items to trade in, how to place buy orders and sell orders, and how to monitor your orders. Obviously there are many things still to learn, and many specifics that will take time to absorb, but almost all trading works according to these basic principles.

In the next few slides, I'll give you a few simple tips and tricks that should prove helpful for your first few days of trading.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Train your skills - “Trade”, “Retail”, “Wholesale” and “Tycoon” all increase the total number of orders your character can have active at one time. The more orders you have, the more items you can trade in. And we've already touched on the “Broker Relations” and “Accounting” skills. The less you spend on fees and taxes, the more ISK you can put in your pocket.

Other skills, such as “Day Trading” and “Marketing”, are useful too. Read their descriptions and check the stickies in the Market Discussions forum to learn how they work.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Trade in what you know - When searching for deals, look first at those items you have sold or bought before.

Loot drops from NPC pirates are a good source of modules and ammunition and many players sell these items for ISK, while other players may want to buy them. Remember what you have looted in the past, and what you have put on your ship.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Watch your orders - It is unlikely that you will be the only person trading in a particular item. Check on your orders periodically to make sure that you are the highest buy order and the lowest sell order in your area. If not, adjust your orders to be competitive. How much you do this will depend on how much time you wish to devote to trading, and the types of items you trade in.

Be aware, though, that with increased competition and price adjustments, the profit for the items you are trading in could drop considerably. Before making adjustments, consider if it will be worth it. If the profit you would gain by competing isn't enough to satisfy you, don't be afraid to move on to something else.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Watch your profit - Broker's fees and sales tax can eat into your profit margins, especially if you haven't taken the time to train the appropriate skills. If you will only make one or two percent by trading in a particular item, you may actually be LOSING money due to fees and taxes.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Keep track of your business - Take notes or use spreadsheets to track the items your are trading in, and to follow your profits and losses. There are also tools available in the stickies in the Market Discussion forum that can help with this.

If you don't find a way to organize your trading activities, you will quickly be overwhelmed and likely burnt out or lose money. Find a system that works for you and keep your records up to date.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Raise your standings – By doing missions for the corporation that controls the station you do business in, you will increase that corporation's opinion of you. The better your standings, the less money you are charged in broker's fees.

Market Trading 101

Tips and Tricks

Have fun – Remember, EVE Online is a game. There's nothing wrong with being serious when it comes to your hobbies, so long as you are having fun. If watching your orders and adjusting them every few minutes becomes tedious, or if working with your spreadsheets is getting to be too much, try looking to trade in different items or regions where there is less competition.

If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.

Market Trading 101

Thank You!

Thank you for downloading and reading this tutorial. I hope that I have managed to give you decent overview of the basics of using the Market for fun and profit.

If you have any suggestions for this or other tutorials, please EVE Mail them to “Ivar Strahm” and I will incorporate them in a future edition.