Eve Market Doldrums

If your a new player or new to market trading you might be asking yourself why is my market volume slowing down? Is Eve Online dying? What exactly is going on? I offer a few opinions as to why you might be seeing low market volume.

Summer Doldrums

Historically in-game populations trend down in the summer. If we take a look at Eve Offline Stats the player count will decline from June until September then it picks back up once school starts again and winter sets in, in the northern hemisphere. Lower player counts correlate often times with slow market volume. Think of it as a double edge sword less players means less items being destroyed as well as less players purchasing your goods.

SOV Revamp

The SOV revamp has players holding their cards close. It feels like everyone is holding their breath waiting for shit to hit the fan. Player numbers and market volumes will pick up some once this patch hits mid July. Although July is typically still a down trend for player counts as the summer doldrums continues, lots of people are on vacation. Did CCP plan the SOV roll out when player counts are typically low on purpose? The tinfoil hat sure doesn't breath well during the summer. 

Burn Amarr

Burn Amarr is icing on the cake. Again several factors to slow market volume. Less players logging in. People tend to just avoid logging in altogether during that weekend. So less movement on the markets. Goods and services aren't being moved around as rapidly it slows the whole market. Expect business to be back to usual next week, still the impact is felt.

Cheap Materials

Another outlier I was thinking about is cheap materials. Producers(that aren't on vacation) are easily over producing as tech 2 materials and to a lesser extent minerals prices slump. Though I am not sure this has as much effect as the previous points. You run some calculations and see how much you could be making on a few items and you have some run away over production on your hands during the summer months.

Keep a watch on the news, devblogs, and Eve Propser's Market Show to anticipate your market volume.

Even after three years Eve markets are still a harsh mistress

Eve is still a harsh environment at least when it comes to the market. The tl;dr I was setting up a sell order when I dropped 100 million worth of goods for 8 million. On account of a zero. Even after playing for three years you can always make mistakes. Don’t reset or set up market orders right after you get up in the morning and aren’t quite awake yet. The takeaway always remain diligent in all your financial transactions.

The unforgiving system of Eve Online is what I am still playing for. Hardcore mode is turned on for everyone all the time. June marks three years since I first started playing Eve Online all be it off and on at times. I remember thinking back then how much more people must know than me. Sitting here now after three years there is still so many things I haven’t explored.

The big difference I have found as the years go by is my attitude toward the isk value of different ships and things. When I first started playing I would have gone crazy if I had missed typed a market order and sold a 100 million in goods for a tenth of the price. Today I just shrugged it off and went back to my spreadsheets to calculating next week's gains. Spending billions a week on manufacturing materials pales in comparison to my first month in game saving every last isk for that Retriever(which I destroyed in less than a week in low sec that is another story). Now I buy and sell ships worth hundreds of millions just to play with for the afternoon and soon forget their loss or sell them.

Here's to an afternoons past time for a hour every day.

Weekly Market Analysis Eve Prosper [Video]

Eve Prosper has been putting out some great market analysis videos. The simple fact is if you need more graph porn in your life you need to check these videos out. If you call yourself any kind of an industry player or trader in Eve you need to check these videos out. I will post this weeks episode below.

Eve Prosper's blog has been notable for it's third party development and industry analysis and guides.

Operation: Market Consolidation

At the start of July I had active market orders from Tash-Murkon, Kor-Azor, and Domain regions up into the The Citadel and then back down into Essence, Sinq Laison, and Verge Vender. Feeling a little over whelmed and seeing that my operations where suffering from my market creep; I decided to consolidate my market orders.

Earlier this year I had expanded into the Amarr market and moved my main operations into the Domain region with big plans to set up a POS(Player Owned Starbase) industry operation in the area. Shortly after I made the move the industry change devblogs came out and I was soon changing my plans. I scaled back my ambitious POS plans and ultimately dropped my ideas all together as the industry change speculation was driving blueprint markets into the ground. After treading water and waiting for the industry changes I continued selling products in the above mentioned markets.

Fast forward to September as market volumes slowed and real life pressures set in I decided it was time to consolidate what I was doing. I stopped stocking orders in all regions and withdrew my operating assets from Amarr space. So as it sits now I have sold off most of my stocks and am sitting on a huge pile of isk. It is now ready to be reinvested in my next internet spaceship ventures whatever those might be.

Industry Changes Buff or Nerf?

I have been trying to place the Crius industry changes in my mind if they helped or hurt?

A lot of it depends on how you play the game. What angle you look at industry. Do you build capital ships? Are you a small operation? Are you just getting started? Have you been playing for years? Or just use industry on the side to fund other habits? As a result I think some of these areas have been changed for the better and some haven't.

My particular area of concern, not surprisingly, is in the new player department. Two types of industry players have been affected. Casual industry users, those whose main play time is spent doing some other activity, now have a quick and efficient way to build their own equipment or make some isk. Their interaction with the game world will increase and life will be great. The other player that is affected is the up and coming industrial tycoon. Players who spend most of their time focusing on industry. Players, who like myself and imagine many of you, wanted to build a sand castle instead of kicking them down.

The new industry player faces an even greater challenge than many of us did but why you ask? This new system makes researching BPOs(Blueprint Originals) quick and efficient doesn't it? Yes it does very much so. In fact too well, the BPO market was a testament to the required amount of time and money you had to have in order to gain a footing in producing items and making a profit. Simplification of the numbers and metrics was needed yes but the time requirement and system of researching was sound. Now producing efficient blueprints isn't time intensive or costly but wait why is this a bad thing? It seems great doesn't it we all have perfect blueprints now?

No it isn't a great thing at all and it is just starting to affect the markets. Products are going to have a mountain of supply. Over production has always been a problem in the game and always will be. You can produce things much faster than people can destroy them. The kicker is CCP just lowered the time on jobs, removed slot times and lowered minerals required to build items the greatest effect you can see is on T1 products.

Think of a simple supply and demand curve. As the supply becomes greater and greater the demand becomes lower and lower. Prices slowly drop lower and lower. In Eve's case prices become fixed eventually around mineral costs or other required materials. The profit is lost though as market equilibrium sets in very quickly with the change to build times. More supply equals less demand.

The even greater problem is the demand curve. Demand in our example would be defined as that of player activity in game. Demand increases if there are more players consuming goods. And right now there just isn't a lot of new players coming in or current players excited about the game to sustain this new industry model. If we had increased player activity(I mean large player increases year in year out) I am confident the new industry model would be an amazing success. As it stands you have a tough mountain to climb to gain entry into profitable manufacturing.

We were all so focused on the cost changes when we all realized that the time changes were the real nerf. The discussion is only getting started time will tell if markets even out or not.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Operation: Market Adjustment

If you have been following along with my posts over the past month or so you will know that I have been taking a break from Eve Online. Well not any more I am back and kicking. I was secretly hoping the markets would settle down and adjust. My hopes have partially come true and a lot of items have shifted into their new price points. Now what?

I found a lot of the items I used to make are not as lucrative as they had once been. Namely a lot of T1 modules I used to mass produce. These modules had very long build times so supply was limited to some extent. Before I was building 50 units a week with well researched BPOs now my numbers indicate 50 units only takes a matter of days. Couple this with the fact that their is no wait times on manufacturing slots. Equals a flood of these T1 items especially in market hubs. While I didn't expect the time changes to be this significant, I do hope CCP is keeping an eye on these changes(knock on wood). **Note this is build pricing changes aside.

I did half expect my T1 ventures to be unprofitable post patch and had already started retooling towards Tech 2 items and ships and that does seem to be an area with better prospects. Once more unto the spreadsheets. That is right I just made a play on a Shakespeare quote.

How to Prepare for the New Industry Patch Launch

You might be asking yourself how do I prepare for all these wide sweeping industry changes? How do I best position my assets for such a large change? Now I can't speak for you so let me tell you what I have done. I had prepared everything I had located a new system I was going to operate out of. I had moved all of my BPOs and other gear out that direction as well. I had purchased a few other investments and had everything in place.

Then the industry changes were pushed back to July 22. I don't think I have quite mentally recovered from that initial push back. Why might you ask? Because of how I am currently preparing for patch day. The answer is I'm not. I put up all my manufactured goods on to the market, any other trades goods I was holding on to I set up market orders for as well, and then let my subscription fall off.

Why deal with patch day this way? The first reason that probable has more to do with it than my new feature woes is the slow markets during the summer. A lot of people take breaks from Eve and are on vacation during the summer so the game just tends to be unexciting during that lull. The second reason is after preparing for that patch and having it pushed back I realized real quick that nothing was concrete until the thing was live. So among other reason I decided to just sit back and watch the patch math from a distance. In a few weeks after the dust has settled I will get back in and try it out. I have a few other fun ventures I am pursuing in my spare time and Eve hasn't been fitting into those yet but hopefully some time soon.

Unsubscribbed

I am super causal when it comes to playing Eve. I play once every day or two with a healthy dose on the weekends if I can. I also take month long breaks every three or four months letting my subscription drop just because I can, I have this weird thing about controlling my life and not letting games control it but that's not what I want to talk about here. And its not like I don't have enough isk for PLEX or money for a subscription I just let it drop off. Taking a break you could call it.

What happens to your account after the subscription is up? You might think that is a silly question, I don't think its a silly question at all, in fact I think its an important question to understand.

Skill training stops, ok fair enough.
Any industry job whether manufacturing slot or research slot continues until finished ok...
All market orders stay active until their posted time ends which you can set to three months.

Why can you have active industry slots and active market orders(I get that you can't update them but three months is a long time) when you are not even paying to play the game? You would think a for profit company like CCP wouldn't allow you to do this sort of thing. Especially puzzling with the heavy market oriented aspect of Eve game play. Well don't have a few unsubscribed manufacturing alt accounts? If you can't beat them join them.

I mean seriously if you look at it from a market stand point of isk optimization I could subscribe every other month giving me 6 less PLEX a year I need to use on an alt account while at the same time using those 60 slots(3 characters times 10 manufacturing and 10 research) que out for a month. This only gets better as the slot que times will soon be removed.

PLEX: Intervention 2

During fanfest this year Dr. Eyjo, CCP's in-house economist, confirmed another plex intervention during his Eve economic presentation . Several notable differences can be drown between the first plex intervention and the second. Dr. Eyjo was very forthcoming the first time as to the problem, the reason, the fix, the how and the result. He was far more vague this time around giving away almost nothing other than confirming there was a problem and we fixed it. What do we know?

The Problem:
We all saw the problem, plex prices took a huge spike much bigger than the last time around. Dr. Eyjo decide to take action because volume dropped not because of the price increase, very important to note this distinction.

The Reason:
Dr. Eyjo does mention plex has increased in usage over time.  He says sells have increased over the lifetime of plex. Other than that he doesn't really pin the reason on this intervention on any one aspect of the game, be it ship skins or an other feature, other than the volume of trade dropped below his liking so he decided to intervene. A little bit different explanation than last time.

The Fix:

EVE Central Bank may, or may not, take actions to intervene with the PLEX market if its stability is severely threatened.
- Important to note that it does not mean that there is a specific target for PLEX prices or money supply in the future

CCP by Dr. Eyjo's request decided to take action.
 
The How:
Dr. Eyjo said, he will not tell you how or why or how much. "We didn't affect the trade, we did do a little bit of ingame trickry that helped the price." What do we know? CCP had a little plex give away in the middle of April to the tune of 700 plex (Source:TMC Story, Evenews24 Story). I think he seeded the market with plex as well as the give away.


The Result:
The plex market stabilized and he didn't say much more about it.

Conclusion:
Dr. Eyjo repeats over and over that in-game markets are not inflated. Plex interventions have only taken place when the volume begins to drop and not when the price goes up any particular amount. Both ideas I agree with, if you look at his graphs about facets and sinks you begin to understand that the game has controls on the amount of in-game currency and can only scale up as more people play the game. Maybe that's why he started his presentation this year covering inflation.

Freighter Pilots Fret

As a game develops and gets older there is those little quality of life things that are added. Better menus, removal of needless clicking, and of course faster travel around the game.  We have seen it with the addition of more jump clones and less time to use those jump clones. The other thing that usually develops over time is the removal of barriers to entry into certain types of game play. For example the devs hope that the industry changes will simplify the process and make it easier for more people to build stuff, as one recent example.

So I don't understand why the devs slowed freighters down in Rubicon, they were painfully slow already. I didn't understand why people weren't more upset then. But they are upset now. And why not? A freighter is going to have less cargo space, less ehp, and still be slow. You can get one or the other back with different rigs but then comes the added barrier to entry card.

If you want more people to become players in your mmo making the game more time consuming instead of less doesn't make sense. Making people pay, half again what the ship cost, to bring that ship up to speed for how it use to fly for all those years doesn't make sense.

So the solution is, as I have heard commented before, just use a shipping service or courier contracts. Which is what we will have to do even when the eventual shipping prices goes up. I still feel for you new industrialists out there I thought I had a hard time working up the ladder. You guys will have a mountain to climb once the industry changes hit in July.

Updated Re-balance for Freighters May 21, 2014

Keeping Up With Kronos and now Crius

If your like me you are all really busy and don't have a lot of time to keep up on all the changes coming up with the Kronos release. I wanted to create a summary of changes and touch on the impact this would have on the market. Several other people have already put together some really good articles that cover pretty much everything I wanted to touch on so I am going to point you their way.

The first thing is a summary of the changes you can find a good list over at K162space. With so many changes it can be hard to keep up with everything, it is nice to see a complete list for referencing and review.

The second is an article over at evenews24.com called Predicted Winners and Losers from the Kronos Changes. Danny Centauri did a great job covering a lot of the market speculation surrounding Kronos. Go over give it a read, take some notes, and keep running those calculations. Also check out his blog posts Unofficial Kronos Patch Notes and now Unofficial Crius Patch Notes

I have been going over the devblogs again this week doing some calculations. I had somethings I was going to cover but with the industry changes being pushed back until July 22, likely things will change.

Update: Also a new devblog is out explaining exactly what is going to be in Kronos.

Economic Insight into 11th Year Celebration

A couple of quick thoughts on Eve's 11 Celebration achievement counters which if reached unlocks more gecko drones.The thing I find most telling about the numbers chosen for the counters is that they give us a snap shot of the economic impact of a given play style over a week's duration. So with that in mind lets look at the significance or impact these play styles have from week to week.

Volume of Ore Mined 25.7 billion m3, ore is refined before its hauled to far which would break this number down pretty fast. On top of that any manufacturing or compression that takes place will quickly negate the large m3 cargo space of all this ore.

NPC Bounties Claimed 7.44 trillion, this is a huge isk facet and to think sinks will be about equal to this amount. The engine that is the Eve economy is massive.

Science and Industry Jobs 802 thousand, considering the amount of slot ques in stations this is a fairly quantifiable number.

ISK Destroyed 5.34 trillion not a totally unknown or unexpected number considering the wide spread reporting of killboards. Its pretty amazing that this happens week in week out. A really cool look inside the Eve economy.

The second thing that hit me was the type of categories they choose. Which break down to 4 activities mining, missions or ratting, industry and pvp. Wouldn't it be interesting to have other achievements to work towards for, I don't know, exploration sites run or courier contract cargo amounts something like that.

Happy Mining, Hunting, Researching, and Pvping for Eve's Birthday!

What do I think of the Industry Changes?

Some of my dramatic notes about the changes will now follow:

We are on the eve of the greatest changes to industry ever. No pun intended.

CCP could have been quoted as saying: "All your spreadsheet are belong to us."

CCP has hit the rest button on all of our spreadsheets. This might as well be day one save for the amount of investment ready isk players have.

Its been a couple days since I wrote down my knee jerk reactions to the different industry changes. I am having a hard time swallowing the complete overhaul. I think if they would have spread out these devblogs over the past four months instead of the last two weeks the reaction of the industrial player base may have been sated some what. Instead we got a complete overhaul of the 3 levels of the industry system plus some extra all in a two week span.

Level 1 Refining: Reprocess all the things

Level 2 Blueprints: Researching, the Future

Level 3 Manufacturing: The Price of Change and Building Better Worlds and Industry UI

Extra Random Sauce: Team Up(Not actually teams just npc, isk sink, bonus things.)

I get it though, I get that refining needs some tweaks. I understand that blueprints needed some work. I realize the slot system and pricing fix were inevitable to better scale with the growth of the game. The teams thing just goes a little far into the realm of needless complication. Either way it just got a whole lot harder for a newbro looking to start into the manufacturing game. It will be tough to compete against well established manufacturing operations.

I do like the new UI though, the layout and design looks really nice.

Building Better Worlds by Destorying NPC Slots

If you haven't read through the industry changes, in this devblog, slated for the 2014 summer expansion release, you should go do so now. Where to begin? Here...

Allow Starbases to be anchored anywhere in high-security space and without standing requirements

At first glance I was like hey that's cool, kind of screwing over people that make corps with standings, but sounds good. Then I thought about it for a minute.

Remove the ability for players to use stations to safely store their blueprints without putting them at risk in Starbase structures. Players will still be able to start their jobs remotely (via the use of Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking skills), but will now have to move their blueprints directly into the starbase structures that require it, like other materials.

What?! Wait... this will effect BPO and BPC producers if the slot changes compensate enough for research to be done in stations you won't need a POS(Thats a big if we'll wait for the numbers to make a call on that one.) Still though if running research in NPC stations is viable. Do you need a POS in high sec for research?

...most of the Starbases in high-security space use Mobile Laboratories to compensate for the lack of Material Efficiency Research slots in Empire space.

If all those research POS aren't needed what does this do to the ice market?(Not to worry though everyone can now throw POSes up.) Now we haven't seen the numbers yet so the only conclusion I can come up with is that using NPC stations for research and industry will mean fees are what comparable to running a POS?

Expect costs ranging from 0% to 14% of the base item being produced for the most extreme case.

The above quote references the new slot fee for NPC stations. Running ten jobs at 5% that would sure add up quick. I guess you might want a POS after all for manufacturing. So are we just trading POS researching for POS manufacturing?

Only the numbers will tell how the fees will scale.

Investment Guide: Quick Hauling

Your options here are pretty simple either you are picking up things and moving them to sell and make a profit or you're picking up someone else's things via courier contract and moving them for a profit. Your wanting to maximizes your profit potential by calculating the size of the cargo by the amount of isk you will earn by the time it will take to move. With this simple formula in mind lets take a look at your hauling options.

History
Before we get too deep it would be best to take a look at the skill changes and ship changes that have taken place the past several years in Eve. Before the skill changes you use to be required to skill up to high levels before you could use the larger industrial haulers that isn't the case any more you can use any industrial of any race as soon as you train the racial skill to level one.

Ship changes have created more variety among the different industrial ships allowing for more specialization. In my next guide I will cover the differences more in depth but for this basic guide we will stick to the smallest cheapest haulers that you are given in your career agent tutorials and the fittings and uses of each.

Skills
Gallente Industrial 3
Evasive Maneuvering 3
Mechanics 3
Jury Rigging 3
Astronautics Rigging 1
Warp Drive Operation 1
Hull Upgrades 2
Shield Upgrades 4
Tactical Shield Manipulation 4

Total time: 8 days, 11 minutes, 28 seconds(time based on no remap); Cost: 789,000

Ship Fit
[Nereus, Hi Sec]

Large Shield Extender II
EM Ward Amplifier II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II

Local Hull Conversion Nanofiber Structure I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I

Ship fit source: Nereus - UniWiki

The Nereus will give you a fast little hauler with a little more ehp than the old weaker haulers. Keep in mind don't fly what you can't afford to lose. This includes whatever your hauling in your cargo bay. As a rule of thumb if you haul anything over 100 million isk your going to start attracting unwanted attention.

At max skills you're only looking at about 8000m3 of cargo give or take a few modules. Its not that bad considering how slow freighters travel with the warp speed changes. I will cover specific haulers in the next guide as you follow along the Gallente line of haulers you will find lots of options. Whether you're working towards being an industrialist or looking to getting into hauling full time this is a great place to start.

2013 Q4 News and Meta Game effects on In-Game Markets

I was going to include this review of news items in my Q4 market report but there is enough information here that it warranted its own post. The review of some of these out of game happenings is important to the overall market analysis as I am coming to conclude that players actually logged into the game and activity in the game has the greatest effect on the market at large.

Over the past quarter there have been lots of scandals and all around bad press coming from several sources. The first of these is Terms of Service change dropped right at the start of the forth quarter. I don't think it helped that they dropped this right in a slump of what was August and September with their low player numbers. But could they help it? I did a short post about the TOS change and if for nothing else read this entertaining article on the scam that might have brought all these changes about.

After all of that news it couldn't have possibly gotten worse for CCP could it? Yep it did it got a lot worse. The Somer Blink Scorpion incident put another bad taste in everyone's mouth and then the Real Money Trade allegations started bubbling over on to the picture and just made things even worse. Its been said once but I will say it again internet spaceships are serious buizness. Now I can't prove that these news events slowed down the economy in-game but all of these things start to paint a narrative for potential players and old players in the form of potential re-subscribers.

The last bit of bad news for the quarter that has a more real market effect was the Amazon PLEX price mess up. It should be noted that the effects of dumping mass amounts of PLEX on to the market has the effect of curbing a natural supply and demand price increase especially considering this was the month before an expansion was due to drop. See PLEX Intervention.

To round off the Q4 a couple of great things happened. The Rubicon Expansion dropped on Nov. 19 and if there is one thing a trader loves more than anything else it is increased player and market activity with speculation surrounding an expansion.

The last thing to take place during the quarter was the Sister of Eve PLEX for Charity Event. This needs some carefully examination as wealthy players cash out isk for PLEX to donate to the charity this could very well have the same effects as a PLEX Intervention and would also help repair the Amazon PLEX dump that took place two months previous.

No one event during the quarter seems like it would have much effect on in game markets but tied together things begin to paint a picture of player sentiments and directions of large cash injections into and out of the market through PLEX. Or I could just be tin-foil-hatting this all way to far. As a trader keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your news feed because in Eve Online even the meta game can have an effect on your trade volume.

Wow that was way to much meta for the morning see you around.

Weighing in on Warp Speed Changes

It seems like a lot of people are overjoyed with the changes to warp speed increase. Its great right? Smaller ships are faster than ever. I was hopping they would at least leave freighters and capitals as bench marks and ships would move faster as they got smaller. Instead cruisers are the bench mark and save for a slight long distance speed increase to freighters(check graph) they have an increased time for warping(on the low end 1 AU to 50 AU). I do quite a bit of flying in my freighter, shipping things around, so what to do about it is the real question?

I think freighter services will go up in price because it is going to take a whole lot more time for these guys to fly around. So between flying even smarter shipping trips and using shipping services until the eventual price increase is the direction I will take to keep my time flying down.

As far as flying smarter your going to want to use all of the new rebalanced indy ships to your advantage now more than ever. It might be a fun experiment to see how much in terms of volume I could haul in comparision to the slower freighter. Even more things to plan and think about if your hauling.

And on the one hand maybe this will stop afk shipping because its going to take hours to fly across space if you afk a freighter.

Graphs:
Warp Speed Times Before The Expansion
Warp Speed Times After the Expansion

Amazon's PLEX Dump

I have been reading about amazons little PLEX mishap they had. According to CCP only a thousand or so PLEXs were sold during the deal. The article on TMC says the market price did drop 10 to 20 million but has since leveled.

I would like to look at two things considering PLEX prices. First, I suspect this injection of PLEXs on the market will have similar affects as the CCP PLEX Intervention that happened last year. In that it will cause PLEX prices to level off in the short term. Now I wouldn't consider it out of the question for CCP to start buying up small quantities of PLEX or to with hold any future buy back interventions they could have been planning. Just remember PLEX is a moderated item and CCP can and will intervene.

The second thing is to watch the affect this will have on PLEX prices on the eve of the Rubicon expansion. Did you see what I did there? Anyway break it down to simple supply and demand. This episode, incident whatever you want to call it, will it curb the potential price peak of PLEX for this expansion?

Time will tell.

Eve Rubicon: Investing and Speculating

Let's check out what interesting investments opportunities can be made for Eve Rubicon (Yes all I can think of is that darn Jeep model)

POCOs
POCO changes are going to be a big drive for conflict and will make pi production costs possibly shift down, I think as people shop for better tax rated POCOs, corps that raise their taxes will soon find their planets empty there is just to many choices. They will be hard to defend large amounts of planets expect smaller alliances to dominate pockets of regions. A smaller type of sov warfare for high sec and a way to generate some income a great change to the game. Expect fluctuations in PI products to level out several months after release.

A quick side note. Everyone is bemoaning the fact that the goons are just going to ROFL stomp all of the high sec POCOs and own all of them. My question to you is why would they want to?  Goons are a large null sec alliance they will be busy protecting their moon shiz out in null. If POCOs were the end all take all they would own all the low sec ones which they don't. Now will there be PI Interdictions you bet, probable be an annual event, but I doubt a full 2000 system POCO Goon Empire will emerge from this.

Now as far as investing in the Customs Office Gantry and building them, besides a slight up tick in prices at release I think they will stay stable. Remember in low and zero you can already blow these things up but no large market really exists for CO.
DevBlog: EVE Rubicon: Player Owned Customs Offices in Hi-Sec Make sure and read the fine print they are shifting PI tax rates and changing all sorts of stuff here.

Personal Deployable Structure
PDSs not a lot of information exists to give us a clear direction. Expect this to be a great build and a way to make lots of isk if you have the means to invest in such a large project. I am definitely going to keep my eye on it but I am into building stuff. Expect to need a freighter to move any large amount of these around. Effects on the market: moon prices will vary slightly around the fact that now pirates will be dumping plunder on to the market if the mechanic works right for the siphon unit.

Warp Speed
Hopefully with the work around the mechanic pushes freighters to be a little bit faster for those of us that do our own hauling. Exciting news and an all around great fix.

New SOE Ships
New ships are always nice though they will no doubt be bought using lp. Meaning mass production is out of the question. If you have a few billion isk this might be a fun place for speculating once patch goes live. It will probable be worth it for a couple months until the ships are common place.

Other Ship Changes
As far as investments goes interceptors were sold out within minutes of the announcement so unless you where on top of this one you could catch the tail end of the speculation here.

UI Changes
Other changes deal more with  UI aspects nothing here to really invest in. Although some of the skills are getting switched around a bit if you deal in the skill book market.
DevBlog: License to kill: Certificates Overhaul

My Investments
As for my own investments I think I am going to stick with what I have been doing. Working the implant market and building industrial ships. The Expansion really only means one thing increased player activity and that is all I want/need to move my market orders. Glad for the early release date Nov. 19, 2013.

Links and Updates in no particular order:

How to: A Trade Guide

I have gone through, step by step, my thinking process for trading products on the market in Eve Online. This is the basic break down of what goes through my mind when I trade or manufacturer something in Eve Online.

1. Research Phase
1. First I pick a product, Choose a buy station/(mauf. cost) and choose a sell station.
2. Go to the market window and check:
Buy station's product's:

• Cost overtime - Does the product general stay cheap to buy or make?
• Current orders -  Is there enough supply for you to buy from at that low cost?
• Volume overtime -  Are people resupplying?

Sell station's product

• Cost overtime -  Is it stable at a high price?
• Current orders - Is there low supply?
• Volume overtime - Does it sell?

3. Scrap it/ Watch it/ Go for it.

• Scrap it - If your asking yourself these questions and every time you say no just remove the item from your watch list.
• Watch it - Indicators aren't great but margins have been good in the past? Keep it on your watch list and wait for another day.
• Go for it - All indicators good overtime, it is time for a test phase.

2. Test Phase One - Low volume one week test phase.
1. Buy product/mauf. at supply station. I usually start my first order at one to five units worth of stock.
2. Set up test order with 5 units.
3. One week later check speed it sold. Quick sells are good, constant high 30% - 50% margins with no competition are best. Usually though you will see sold returns at about 10% margins. Time to move to the next test phase.

3. Test Phase Two - Higher volume one week test phase.
1. Buy product in larger amounts, 10 to 20 units as capital allows.
2. Set up test order with 20 units.
3. Check day to day over a week.

• Do you get undercut a lot? Yes or No
• Does it sell quickly(Relatively small amount of time between sells)? Yes or No

4. If indicators are still looking good and you want to move the item into your portfolio its time to go all out.

4. Portfolio Phase
Start buying and setting up your orders now, you should have run the numbers and should be good to go all out. As time goes on you will get an even better idea of how much competition there is for an product, how much volume you can push, and how much isk your really making.

• Run the numbers check for the margins and the expected monthly totals. You want to get a general idea of what your going to make on the item this will help you later on as your portfolio expands to compare good trades to better trades.
• Don't forget to keep an eye on other regional markets through Eve Central, contracts and general chatter.
• Use tools like EveMon and EveMentat also Eve Neocom App for mobile devices to check: Product Orders is your volume low do you need to restock? You can tell when you have been undercut or its a low player day when order volume isn't dropping.

Optional Expansions
Regional Expansion: Run test phase at other locations in region. Then see how much of a regions volume you can capture.

Hostile Take Over: Identify constant undercut persons or stations. Bring in goods at lower price to remove them. Careful not to drop price to much.  Be creative here remove their supply, drop the price, hire some hit men.

Portfolio Review: After you have a long list of trade items, review your monthly numbers. Replace poor performers with test products or take strong performers into new regional markets.

Overnight/Weekend Investments: Keep a list of expensive low margin items for days when you need your money moving but are on vacation or have a busy weekend.