The best piece of advice I can give to beginners in trading, as a beginner in trading myself, is I think that trading comes down to metrics, knowing what to look for and how to get there.
I think I’m on the right track. The purpose of this screenshot is to show my process. You’ll see I work from left to right automating the task of coming to two conclusions.
How many units I need to buy to earn 10,000,000isk.
How much isk I can earn from 1,000,000,000isk.
Getting there is straightforward, it’s just some accounting numbers.
So far…this seems to be the best sheet for me. So feel free to learn from it.
I want to add, I really think this metric is a solid one.
It’s powerful and accurate to know at a glance: 1) what is the cheapest block to earn 10,000,000isk? It’s useful to compare that to 1bil in trades to know roughly how much you’d earn for every 1bil turnover.
the most important block to look at is the profit margin; the higher the percentage the more profit you make, now that being said it’s not the only thing you need to look out for, you also need to look at the volumes traded. The higher volumes traded the faster the turnaround is.
not sure if you’ve calculated taxes and fees into your sheet there, and with the “recent” changes it can eat a fair share of the profits.
I have, it’s all bundled into the “sell minus cost” and “buy plus cost”. Modification of orders is addressed by the 10mil blocks, I eye-ball it really easy now. That’s the brilliance of this methodology though too.
All I have to do is keep my block-sizes at neede sizes for 10mil isk return.
That super-simplifies ALL the rest you mention in your post.
For instance if my block size needed for 10mil is 450 units, I can look at my product, does it trade 450 a day? an hour? Does it trade 100,000 units a day? Etc.
450 fits well into 100,000 units traded a day. Etc.
So the metric covers volume, that is, it easily let’s me assess volume.
The rounded return also allows me to quickly assess modifying orders.
The modification will cost me 1mil plus 500,000 in fees? How much does that eat into my 10mil profit? How many times can I do it before I have no profit?
Etc.
So while you’re right! The traditional method of GETTING THERE was not working for me. So this is my own method to help me get there.
Yes, but for anyone reading this far down, you’re totally right.
How much volume, what margins, etc. are the “nuts and bolts.”
It’s just how does someone get to see that at-a-glance? There are so many ways, most spreadsheets go straight for it. For me that just wasn’t clicking, sort of like cliff jumping
I don’t know if it is in this thread when you mentions but the importance of the time frame for an item is essentiel.
When you are using a spreadsheet ( there are a lot player who use it) , you’ll end up often in a fight with the same traders => the windows closes quickly .
Now with the relisting fee , this windows is closed quicker and the profit difficult to estimate.
When I see your excel sheet , the only thing I have in mind : " yes, before that could make some sens" .
For me the reason it is working so well is because I have things measured by lot-sizes per 10mil profit. I can easily budget for “relisting” (I call them ticks).
So I can get a feel for how competitive a product is by how often I’m ticking, while easily keeping track of how profitable I’m remaining within that 10mil window.
The 10mil is just an arbirary window, it can be 5mil, it can be 50mil. 10mil seems pretty manageable, I think it will be more competitive when trying to push 50mil blocks…
For some of my products, that 1bil a day in trades is clearly not possible by volume.
