EVE Online: Trading Guide

EVE Online: Trading Guide

Often overlooked by many players as too complicated or too risky, trading on Eve can potentially make you very rich, very fast, but it requires some knowledge, some ISK and often a fair amount of effort. In my guide I will explain how to start trading, and ways to increase your income if you have just started trading.

Step 1: Getting Prepared

Unfortunately to trade successfully, you will need some ISK and some skills to start with. There is no minimum amount of ISK you need but I started trading with around 100mil ISK. It will cost a lot more than this to start trading effectively however, as the trade skills are extremely expensive. It is also not extremely important (unless you want to become a full time trader) which areas you have your attribute points in, as although the skills are expensive, it actually does not require a lot of skill points to trade and make (lots of!) money.

Skills

You will probably eventually all of the skills I have listed, but you can still trade effectively with many of them at level 3 instead of 4, although Accounting IV is essential to allow you train Margin Trading, which greatly increases your purchasing power.

Below is the list of the skills I recommend getting, and the level I would eventually aim to train them to 

Trade IV - Increases max orders by 4 per level. Level 4 required for Daytrading.

Daytrading IV - Increases the range you can modify your orders, level 4 allows you to modify orders up to 20 jumps away.

Marketing IV - Increases the range you can place sell orders, level 4 allows you to place sell orders up to 20 jumps away. Level 2 required for Procurement skill.

Procurement IV - Increases the range you can place buy orders, level 4 allows you to place buy orders up to 20 jumps away. Level 4 required for Visibility skill.

Accounting IV - Decreases transaction tax by 10% per level. Level 4 required for Margin Trading skill.

Broker Relations IV - Reduces broker fees by 5% per level. These are further reduced by good standings.

Margin Trading III - IV - Decreases amount of ISK required to deposit into escrow upon placing buy orders. This is a great skill as you do not need to deposit the full value of your buy orders into escrow, leaving you with more ISK to invest elsewhere. If you try to spend more than you can afford (e.g. your buy order gets filled but you can't afford it all) then that buy order will be cancelled.

Retail IV or V - Increases max orders by 8 per level. Retail V required for Wholesale As you start becoming more successful, you will probably want to increase this to level V in order to allow you to train Wholesale to maximise your market presence,

Wholesale III - Increase max orders by 16 per level.

Visibility III - Increases the maximum range of your remote buy orders. Level 3 will let you set up remote orders with 10 jump range. Level 4 and 5 are generally unnecessary at first in general, as 20+ jumps range usually covers the entire region, and region buy orders can be set up at any station and this does not affect orders made in station.

Standings

It is highly advantageous if you (or ideally an alt, you can join a gang when running missions to share standings) can run level 4 missions with one of the main factions Navy's in the area you are trading in (at the moment Caldari Navy may be most helpful to some, as this will increase your standings in the biggest supermarket in the universe: Jita IV - Moon 4 - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant). This will allow you build up some ISK easily when necessary and give you vastly improved standings in their stations (and some improved standings in other stations of that race if you have been running storyline missions). This in turn will lead to reduced costs when placing orders at these stations and allows you to trade items with lower profit margins.

Ships

Although not strictly trading, you will often want to be able to haul your stuff. The ship I use to run a lot of my trade items around in is a Kestrel. It has a large capacity for a frigate and allows you to fit a reasonable shield buffer, although any frigate with a large capacity will fill a similar roll. You should always use warp to 0 (especially with valuable cargo) as near the trade hubs there is a chance you will get suicide ganked. Using warp to 0 in a frigate in high sec virtually eliminates any chance of getting suicide ganked due to the time it requires to lock a frigate.

You will probably require an industrial hauler sometimes when you have larger amounts to move. You should shield buffer this as with your frigate. Eventually you may want to train the skills for a Blockade Runner Tech 2 Industrial as this will allow you to move in safety, including in low-sec.

Step 2: Making some ISK

Now you have a ship, a small wedge of ISK in your wallet and the trade skills listed above, you will want to start placing orders, but what to buy, and where?

Location, Location, Location

You will probably want to start trading a mission or trade hub (Jita is fine but extremely competitive). These can be usually be found easily by either searching the forums for a list of hubs, or by looking on the market to see where the most orders are being placed. For example, in the Citadel it should not take you long to see that Motsu is the big (mission) hub. Don't forget to try and increase your standings with whichever faction owns the station you are trading in, as this will save you on fees on your transactions.

If you do not like the intense trading style of the major trade hubs it is possible to trade in lower volumes with higher profit margins in other areas with much less competition. As well as many smaller level 3 and level 2 hubs, there are various small low sec trade hubs for example, and with the right trade skills you shouldn't need to venture to the station itself. You can often buy very low and sell very high in low sec areas, particularly items which are needed for any type of PVP.

Now what should I look for to buy and sell?

You will also notice that each races items/ships will tend to be more popular in their sovereign space (with the exception of Jita and to a lesser extent other large hubs), for example Autocannons will tend to sell faster in Minmatar space than Caldari space, but Missile Launchers will tend to sell better in Caldari space than Minmatar space. You can get a good idea of the various markets from other websites which display buy and sell orders in each region by searching on google for eve markets, although this should be used as a guide as it is not realtime and the markets are often volatile.

If you are in the mission/trade hub, Motsu, for example, you may want to look at ships and items people use for their Level 4 missions. This will probably consist of lots of Ravens and Drakes, and some salvagers The most common fittings for these can be found through google easily and you can also trade the most popular ammunition that is used for these missions. Once you have some more ISK you could start trading the Ravens and Drakes themselves, but you will not make as much ISK initially doing this.

You could also look at buying the loot and salvage that comes from the missions that are being done at the station, you can often haul this to a larger hub to make a big profit. If you do not wish to do the hauling yourself you can always set up a courier contract, just remember to include this in your profit margin calculations.

You will quickly get a feel for what will make a profit, and you will quickly discover you can make a profit on almost anything (and to some extent, anywhere), but some items will make money much faster than others. 

Flavour of the month? Changes Ahoy?

Try to keep an eye out for items/ships that are the 'flavour of the month'. These items/ships will trade in high volumes, particularly at trade hubs, therefore it is possible to sell your stock very quickly and build up profits fast, but be careful to check the profit margins on each item are not too small!

You should also try to keep up to date to with changes in eve, as for example demand for ships/items that are due to be 'nerfed' will decrease in the run up the patch.

Profit Margin vs Volume

Popular items will often have smaller profit margin's on individual items, for example lets say you are in Motsu and you want to check the orders for 220mm Vulcan Autocannon II, you will probably see a bunch of similar buy orders, and a bunch of similar sell orders.

Lets say the 220mm Autocannons are selling for 1,000,000 ISK and there is are station buy order for 650,000 ISK. Now you should be able see that there is a 350,000 ISK difference between the buy and sell order.

You now place a buy order for 650,000.01 ISK, or just above highest buy order, to buy 10 220mm Vulcan Autocannons, which you will then re-sell at 999,999.99 ISK, just below the lowest sell order. Once all 10 have been bought and sold you should have made roughly 350,000 ISK per unit, so 3,500,000 ISK profit (minus taxes and fees).

This is what I would consider a high profit margin item, as we make 350,000 ISK for every 650,000 ISK invested.

Now we take a look at Invulnerability Field II, we see they are selling for around 1,100,000 ISK and buying for 950,000 ISK. This leaves 150,000 ISK potential profit on each item.

This is not as high as the profit on the 220mm Vulcan Autocannons and may seem like a waste of time at first, however, let's remember you are in Motsu, a Caldari level 4 mission hub, so there there will be a great demand for Invulnerability Field II's for the large numbers of shield tanking missions runners, and low demand for medium guns (220mm Vulcan Autocannons) for the level 4 missions that are available.

You should also try to avoid trading low volume stock which may cause you to lose significant amounts of ISk if the price drops too much before you get chance to sell.