NB: This guide presents a very basic introduction to making ISK through trading. More detailed strategies are left as an exercise for the reader.
One of the least expected bits of the economy in New Eden is that you can often make a lot more ISK via trading than manufacturing. In part, this stems from the fact that we pod pilots can’t make everything – the so-called “named modules, for example – and so we have to feed the market demand. Other factors like convenience and lack of information can also come into play.
The age-old maxim to make money trading is “buy low and sell high“. This means that a lot of pilots spend hours scouring the market for goods whose lowest “sell” order is lower than the highest “buy” order. At first glance, this makes sense, but in reality very few goods have this sort of imbalance. Generic trade goods will have this property at times; the margins, however, often mean you could make a lot more ISK elsewhere. At any rate, those sorts of routes disappear as quickly as they appear.
So, instead, the trick is to reverse that with your own orders. Set up buy orders high enough to bring in goods but low enough that you can resell the items at a decent margin. Your buy orders should cover mission hubs so that you get a constant supply of goods. Generally speaking, you’ll want to set your sell orders in trade hubs, at least when you get started.
Here’s an instructive example. In the Minmatar Republic, the best agent for the Republic Fleet is Vir Honn (level 4 quality 18) in Emolgranlan, which turns out to have a lot of mission-runners due in part to his presence. Minmatar battleships often rely on projectile weapons, particularly artillery, so we look at the market data for large artillery and see the data shown at right:
1200mm Scout Artillery market
Ignoring the one outlier (which will fill quickly), the highest buy order that will cover Emolgranlan is about 3.4m ISK. Yet the sale price in Rens is 3.7m, and in Lustrevik they go for 4.5m (though at lower volume as Rens gets far more traffic). That spread is where a trader makes his money. On the price history, notice that the volume tends to stay between 50 and 100 a day, so there’s enough to make a decent profit.
So set up a buy order a touch higher than the highest one there. Some traders work in increments of 0.01 ISK, while others prefer to compete with larger jumps. Remember, though, that you hurt your own margins first, and that the market will always fill the cheapest available sell order, so don’t set the increments too large.
Once you’ve bought a few, truck them over to your nearest trade hub. In the case of Emolgranlan, that might mean Lustrevik as mentioned, but your volume will improve tremendously (at a hit to your margins, of course) by running them a few more jumps over to Rens.
Trading has many more tricks, particularly when you trade skills like Margin Trading or learn more about the regions in which you’re trading. But the basic path comes down to this:
- Find a commodity with sufficient spread and volume to generate profits proportional to the capital you will use.
- Issue buy orders just above the highest that cover the area from which you want to buy.
- Once your orders fill, pick up the items and transport them to trade hubs.
- Issue sell orders just below the lowest in that hub.
- ???
- PROFIT!
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