Potential returning, small-time trader with some questions

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1

Hello fellow capsuleers.

I am feeling the itch to return to EVE again, but now I am unable to afford a subscription due to being unemployed since the virus hit (still waiting on unemployment 4 weeks now and have to beg my old job for food…).

I started making a plan to start station trading in Jita again, as the profession that interests me the most is trading. It’s strange, but I find making successful trades and watching my wallet grow to be very satisfying. I love relying on my intelligence alone to succeed in a competitive environment, without necessarily having to ruin someone’s day (it just doesn’t do anything for me).

Coincidentally, from what I can gather the most viable way for me to PLEX my account would have been station trading, before the recent changes. However the change to escrow and the relisting fees absolutely terrify me if I’m being honest. My first question is, can someone like me with a reasonable amount of experience just jump back in to station trading, just without constantly updating everything like before? The answer seems to be yes but, frankly I’d like to get more information before I dive in headfirst and drown.

I also would love any trading advice in general, however I’m not expecting any handouts. I’ve wanted to see about possibly following incursions around like a nomad (or just using a courier to ship there), but again lack of knowledge of incursions, limited isk and fear of being wiped out by more experienced aggressive traders leaves me wanting to default to station trading for now.

I also want to ask a somewhat controversial question. I mean no offense to CCP, I find this game to be truly fascinating and very much want it to succeed…

But the cynical part of me feels like the recent market changes were done to prevent people from PLEXing their accounts from alpha as easily. I thought the same thing when I found out that alpha’s can’t run level 4 missions anymore (apparently). Yes, I am speculating that CCP may have had an ulterior motive for this change. Again I mean no offense, and I want to be wrong but that is very much what this looks like. Any insights into this would be appreciated. Some reassurance from a CCP employee would be pretty awesome, too but idk how all that works. In these days of absurdly over-priced microtransactions and predatory, psychologically manipulative marketing tactics it’s very hard to trust any game publisher/company these days!

Finally, I don’t know how much isk I have in assets but I’d be willing to pay an experienced trader for a bit of their time and knowledge IF I can afford to.

Thank you

-Dustin Thellere

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Station trading for an Alpha in Jita is quite complicated right now. You’ll have a minimun tax of %13.72 considering buying and selling orders, and margins have been adjusted pretty rough. Take that and add it to the biggest trade hub and you have a hell of an ISK sink.

You have all the rights to think that way. But, currently, on the other hand, PLEX price is like it was a few years ago, and this clearly help PLEXing the account. I read that one of the reasons for this move is that they did this to reduce the amount of ISK flowing in New Eden.

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Yes.

Buy low, sell high.

I don’t think CCP actually cares about that in the way you think.

They did it because 0.01 isk was a mindless and dumb form of gameplay that only awarded 1) people who no-life’d updates every 5 minutes and 2) bots. It wasn’t directed to specifically preventing Alphas from PLEXing their accounts via the market.

Yeah, all of this is useless and doesn’t actually help you in your journey to become a better marketer.

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I wasn’t looking just to be a better marketer, but also to get an idea of the direction the game is heading. I don’t want to be a good marketer in a game I don’t like. So you’re last comment there is useless and doesn’t help me much on my journey, but your reply is appreciated nonetheless.

I forgot I read earlier that PLEX prices had indeed dropped. That helps a lot to prove to that CCP aren’t simply being greedy (like we see every fking where nowadays).

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No know knows. Anyone who claims is straight up lying.
At best, we have this vague thing from CCP, but beyond that, it’s all just speculation.

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13.72 isn’t much when the goods you are trading have a margin significantly higher than that, of which there are many. Alpha is completely viable and very simple. It scales incredibly poorly compared to omega but that is not a big deal until net asset value climbs high enough that omega is a trivial sum.

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Well thanks for the information gentlemen.

It seems I’ll need to simply readjust, but not as much as I had feared. Station trading may be somewhat more unforgiving, while hopefully being less tedious. Forgive me of being mistrustful towards the developer but I have extremely low expectations nowadays.

I heard a tip from “The Oz” this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y2v_DFEQ5g that you can avoid a lot of fees by setting buy orders at a player owned station one jump away from the trade hub(!). You probably already know this but maybe it will help someone.

Again thanks for the info, all of you, time to make billions and lose it all to a misplaced 0

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People probably won’t give their exact formula for handling the new fees. Also, nobody agrees anyway.

Most will say that it is smarter to make smaller orders and have many that are just sitting in waiting. This means it is crucial to have the 300 orders available on your character.

Then it’s about learning when to adjust orders and when not to. This of course depends on what everybody else does. You will want to predict whether the opponent will also adjust, will leave their orders and wait for your order to go, or will lose their minds.

This in turn depends on how MUCH you adjust your order by. You want to be sure you don’t have to adjust this particular order more than once.

So all these factors come together in deciding whether or not you can make profit. It’s quite interesting.
Feel free to contact Cista2 in game by mail or message if you like.

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The brokerage changes mean you need 100% escrow on your buy orders and the relisting fees can quickly erode your margins if you position your product incorrectly - this is particularly true for Alphas since you can’t train the skills to reduce these fees.

The current scarcity phase of the resource redistribution project is pushing prices higher - creating a rising market. You need to take this into account when setting your buy and sell prices. On the flip side, the value of ISK is also increasing relative to PLEX.

Several of the changes CCP has made in the recent past have been to make life more difficult for bots - the Alpha restriction on running level 4 missions is one of those.

A number of people follow the markets on YouTube. Delonewolf’s EVE Talk videos will give you a feel for the current market - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHd3QaOc1Nw

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I wouldn’t say it’s particularly true of Alphas given the delta is trivial in most cases. High volume low margin goods aren’t in the portfolio of many players, Alpha or otherwise.

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I might be able to help u with something to sell, contact me when your online

i can give u some stuff to sell to help you get started

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