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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Operation: Cynosural Field Generator I

It was March. I had about 75 million to my name. When I happened upon Cynosural Field Generator I in the market window. The price at the time was around 2.7 to 2.5 million. I quickly did the calculations and at the time my build price was around 1.8 million. Adding it up in my head I was going to make millions. Now for a player that only had about 100 mil to his name the prospect of making 500k margins was insane. I bought a blueprint and got right into production. After my first weeks worth of units rolled off the line I took my profits and bought a second blueprint. They cost about 30 million a piece, a pretty hefty investment when my total net worth came to about 100 mil. I kept running the calculations I was going to be rich. I would be making millions a month and soon be on top of the world.

Several weeks later the price dropped as the market caught up and the margins came down to about 100 to 200k a unit. Not bad but nothing like I was expecting long term. It taught me that the markets shift constantly if something is a good build or trade today it soon won’t be so you have to act fast and stay on top of the changes and when you get really good you will start to predict these changes. The other thing it taught me was diversifying. If I had bought several different blueprints I could have spread out my small investment and kept my margins higher.

After another month I bought several more cyno blueprints and started researching them and used the money I had made to buy still other blueprints and invest in a wide range of manufacturing goodness. Even though today I run a wide assortment of manufacturing I still attribute all the money I have made back to that first start up with the Cynosural Field Generator I.

Operation: Iteron V

I didn't have trillions of dollars to invest in R64s. I didn't have billions to invest in ice. I did have a few million to invest in some of the Odyssey ships changes though. Namely the Iteron Mark V back in February when the ship skill changes were released I took notice of the changes in Industrial ship skill change requiring only level one not the hilarious level five required before. I bought a Iteron Mark V BPO put it in the ME research que and forgot about it.

Fast Forward three months, I have been busy investing and saving up isk. I built a freighter to haul those massive Iteron V. It was time to cash in. Not only did I make almost 1 million in profit per ship the first week of trading saw these things flying off the shelves literally. I could barely keep stock piles of sell orders on the market before they were gone. I was happy with the invested time glad to see I could make a little money in retrospect of the bigger markets out there.

Total Ships produced in June: 467 Iteron Mark V

The dust has settled for now and markets are slowly adjusting back to normal levels. Can't wait for the next expansion to make a little money.

Weekend Interest Rates

A bit of real world investment advice applied to the game world. A large company operates with a certain amount of cash on hand each day. The funds are used for daily operations at the company. When everyone goes home at 5 suddenly you have a large sum of money that is just sitting in the bank. What financial people will do is take those funds and transfer them, for a low interest rate, to another company on the other side of the world that is just starting its operations for the day. The next morning the funds are shifted back to the first company to begin its days operations. In short a sort of micro loan that last 12 hours. It doesn't sound like much but count it up times 365 and you might have a positive number on your hands.

How can I use this system and apply it to Eve. This is what I came up with. My quick turn over investment for the weekend. I usually don't have much time to play over the weekend so I don't really need any isk in my wallet during that time(Note I don't have any active buy orders). Lots of players are playing during the weekend so plenty of money to be made. The only requirement is that I want my isk liquid and back in the bank come Tuesday or whenever I am going to be back online. So I pick out a few items, they are typically more expensive items but offer a decent return if you want to sit on them for a couple of days. I buy a very small amount and place several of them in stations a little off the beaten path but still have decent traffic. If I push one or two of them over the weekend I have been keeping my money working for me all weekend.

The second option is to find an item that moves very fast buy just enough to cover a weekends worth of sells. Place it in a station where you won't have to babysit the sell order but know it has a solid population or traffic. Come Monday morning you find your sell order is almost sold out and you have a few more iskies in your pocket.

Eve Online Market Watch: 2013 Q2 Report

A quick look at key indicators shows general market sentiments over the past three months during quarter 2. First and most notable PLEX markets continue there up and down trends. While falling for most of the first half of the quarter due to CCP's original PLEX Intervention back at the end of 2012 as the Odyssey patch neared PLEX prices began to rise. Nearly one month after the expansion PLEX prices have begun to level off and are trending towards the 500 million mark. Several factors that should be taken into consideration on the PLEX market at current is the change to allow duel character training on one account using PLEX and also the fact that the PLEX market is in fact regulated by CCP.

Mineral prices have continued to drop despit the recent patch. I don't know if everyone was busy buying up ice or not but mineral prices across the board have seen a downward trend. Any indicators of ISK inflation seem contary to the lower prices of minerals. In my opinion, watching some ship prices stay the same or even rise as the mineral costs lower shows that traders and manufacturers are the ones profiting while buyers are complaining that their isk is under valued and supposedly inflated.

The economy is shifting rapidly currently and I feel this is a good change. Moon changes are having huge economical and manufacturing impacts. With less Ice mining to be had the general stentment on the forums seems to be more players mining asteroids. Which may account for the current drop in mineral prices.

I have also noticed a subtle drop in manufacturing or at least trade in the markets I actively trade in, namely T1 ships, T1 modules and implants. Are people busy building and trading other things? Out exploring with the new changes in Odyssey? My thought was a lot of trade and manufacturing alts have gone silent as players are busy fighting the conflict in Fountain.

My Quarter 2 Investment Report:
On to my own investments, at the start of the quarter I shifted all my assets out of manufacturing and into implants. I kept them there for about a month earning around a 10% return on investment. At the start of May I had reached my goal of 2 billion isk and began Operation: Obelisk. With nearly all my assets going toward the project my play time slowed down and not much happened in the way of trade. Things picked up again as I finished my Obelisk right as the Odyssey patch was released. In anticipation of having a dedicated hauler I had been researching and preparing BPOs for the past four months mostly in T1 ships. With my production lines all coming up to full out put and having my own freighter to move the minerals and finished goods I have been able to make almost 60% return on investment for several ship lines and 20% on all others.

I started out about five months ago looking for a way to start building ships. I spent hours running numbers and I just couldn't figure out how people were building ships and making any profit. Well after some careful planning, including months of skill training, over 10 billion in items traded. and very selective ship choices I can say I am building T1 ships and taking home a profit.

In other investments, I have built up a pretty strong PI production system. I have 10 planets on two characters running twenty four seven. With my initial set up using my same intermediate PI guide as a template. I have been making around 30 to 40 million a planet per month. I am in the initial testing stages of setting up a new PI system that will double the isk output from the old one. Using the same skills and with a bit more initial investment required hopefully I will have a full write up of that when I am done.

While I am planning to take a break over July from Eve, I am planning on taking profits from my manufacturing lines to invest in both new BPO research for bigger projects in the coming months and then also invest in the implant market which sees continued strong trading.

<< Read 2013 Q1 Report

1 Billion in Networth: The Challenges of a Newbie

After 5 months of playing time, I finally reached 1 billion in net worth. I have only been keeping track of my assets and cash for the past several months but with a total of 5 months training time under my belt I surpassed 1 billion in net worth about the first of April.

Challenges of a New Trader
If your a new player and you own anywhere from 0 to 1 billion isk you find you don't have a secure way of transporting A:Large objects or B: Large volumes of expensive items. Each time I undock I take a risk. The expensive trading options can be very risky business.

The simple fact of the matter is I don't have a freighter. If I had a freighter I could "safely transport" expensive items across high sec or get into the larger ship market. Now I know what your going to say use Red Frog Freight that is all fun and games but there current rates are 1 million a contract and 500,000 isk a jump after that. With how tight trade margins are these days no way am I going to make any money using this method. Why not mission to make isk? Mission grinding is boring and I started this game to play the market anyway. Why not get some PLEX and sell those to buy your shine freighter? I can't say this hasn't crossed my mind a time or two. I don't want to buy PLEX I'll take the long road. With that in mind I have nothing to complain about really those are my options. So what does it all mean? See my new investment strategy below.

Reinvestment: My evolving investment strategy for the summer
As stated above I can't really get into the ship market until I have a freighter. It takes to long to haul the minerals to production and haul the ships back to market. I don't have that much time to play. So with that in mind I am liquidating all my module and asset production.This past week I stopped my one week production cycle and am shifting all my remaining production stock on to the market.

So for the summer or at least for the next several months I am moving into implant trading. Why implant trading you say? Implants are easy to transport in large volumes and for the time being they have decent returns something like 10% when you start hub to hub trading which is what I am usually doing. The returns on the production I was making weighed in about 25 to 30% but I was running into cargo space problems as I outlined above.

Here is hoping for the summer.

Operation Mining Laser Upgrade 1

A couple of weeks ago I just happen to be in game when some one decided they wanted to buy out the entire Mining Laser Upgrade 1 market, don't ask I don't get it either. Not only had I just returned from jita with about 1,500 of them literally minutes before they started buying them out but I had already posted a few market orders in a couple systems before the buyout. I was able to not only sell my stock for triple what it was worth but also ride the resulting bubble making 100k a unit for about 5 days. Total profit about 40 million. I'm not jumping into retirement any time soon but the laughs  were what really counts.

Over 6,000 units bought out.

Eve Online Market Watch: 2013, Q1 Report

I have been keeping an eye on the PLEX market as of late, with the past months PLEX sale by CCP which last I saw was extended to the 18th of March. Prices continue to come down. The past three months graph shows the decline of PLEX back to previous levels from the same time last year.

PLEX sales over the past 3 months.

PLEX sales over the past year.

The other noticable mention from the quarter is the drop in price of tritanium which has seen slight drops over the past month or so. Several other minerals have been trading lower as well.

Overall the market as a whole, item prices have been dropping. I think  the rapid inflation costs we where seeing from last fall, as indicated by PLEX price increases and the jump in minerals prices are stabilizing. The market isn't returning to spring 2012 prices but things are stabilizing.

Although the increased account activity of more players day by day may have just increased demand enough to stabilize the rising prices of items in game. So it may be safe to say that if during summer, player account activity slows, prices will start to jump again as they trended last year. Although I don't think this will happen during this summer because excitement for DUST 514 will keep players logging in during the summer months and a favorable Summer expansion will surely drive more player activity.

At least for now, because of the above stated reasons, I think we are in a deflationary period for the time being.

My Quarter 1 Investment Report:
My investments have gone pretty well over the past three months. I have brought in about 50% return total over three months. I started out with about 300 million and was able to return about 33% each month for a total return of about 50%. Most of that was on T1 module manufacturing. I did build about 50 ships but I think in the end it came at a loss. I limited my play time to about 10 to 20 minutes a day average the only things I did was:

• Update my skill queue,

• Reset my PI production and,

• Reset my manufacturing.

As of right now my only income sources are for the most part passive. Between PI and the T1 manufacturing. I have also thought about expanding into some station trading and general hub to hub trading but as of right now I haven't moved any assets in that direction.

I would like to expand my operations more but I am working a lot in the real world and have been very busy especially this past month. Time permitting, I hope I can continue to play this game I enjoy so much.

Investment Guide: Basic Trade

The Goal: 
Take a limited amount of isk and through market trading increase that isk over time. With a very small amount of skill training you can be working the market quiet effectively. At first you may only be trading a few million isk, with patience your isk pile is going to grow. If your trading in bulky things like minerals your going to need an industrial, other wise I stick to a simple frigate, they travel much faster. For example, implants are extremely small. Though be careful and don't fly afk or carry really expensive items other wise someone could suicide gank you up for those expensive implants.

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The Skills:

Trade - Knowledge of the market and skill at manipulating it. Active buy/sell order limit increased by 4 per level of skill.

Broker Relations - Proficiency at driving down market-related costs. Each level of skill grants a 5% reduction in the costs associated with setting up a market order, which usually come to 1% of the order's total value. This can be further influenced by the player's standing towards the owner of the station where the order is entered.

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The Equipment:

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The Tools:
A calculator - whether you use a handheld or the one on the computer. Helps to calculate margins.
A pen and paper - write down your notes you could do this on text doc or computer file too.
A spreadsheet whether excel or google docs either works. If you want to really start getting advanced and tracking your trades you could start working with a spreadsheet.

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The Idea:
As a new player your going to want to do some old fashioned spaceship flying in between trade hubs. Find some items that are selling low in one region and fly them to a different region where they are trading at a higher price. Enter the calculator. Make sure the total increase of the sell is higher than your trade taxes which start out at 1.5% with no skills into Accounting and also a broker tax of 1% with no skills into Broker Relations

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Total Costs:
1,320,000 isk plus, however little or much you want to invest in trading.

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Time Required:
You could spend 15 minutes a day quickly log-on check your station trades and log off. You could spend 15 hours a day running items from Jita to other markets all over the game. Its your choice its a sandbox remember.

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Other Resources:
Eve-central.com
Eve-markets.net
Eveonline.com Market Discussion Forums
Eve Trade Hubs  based on market volume in the system.

Video of the Week: Industrial Manufacturing

This is the first in a five part video series about industrial manufacturing and selling those items on the market. If you are at all interested in the industrial route you need to review these movies.