Trading

This is a work in progress, please feel free to fill any gaps and provide your own insight

The role of a trader in EVE is to make money by moving goods, and making profit along the way. Trade is not as striaghtforward as running missions or mining for minerals, and can thus be a daunting prospect for a trader fresh out of character creation. This guide aims to help those who are intrested in the world of EVE trading take their first steps.

Character Creation: A Prequel

Before we start discussing the character creation it is important to note that no matter how you create your character, he can still pick up all needed skills later on. If you started as a miner you can simply buy the needed trade skills and get going, but a character created with trading in mind will have a head start on some key skills. Remember to strike a good balance between your attributes, in this case charisma will be one of the more important ones. Charisma helps with all trade and social skills.

Skill Overview

While all skills can beefit you at some point or other, there are a select few skills which are extra important to the trader. Sometimes it is not allways apparent what their direct benefit is. This section will attempt to cover the skills of the trade.

-Trade, Retail, Wholesale and Tycoon

All of these skills increases the maximum number of active buy and sell orders you may have at the same time. A starting character without the trade skill will be able to have the minimum amount of orders (5), each level of these skills adds to that number. Buy and sell orders are used when you don´t want to buy or sell directly (access the options for buy/sell orders by clicking the "advanced" option when buying/selling).

- Broker Relations (Requires Trade II)

Each time you set up a buy and/or sell order it will be handled thru an automated ingame broker. Like real life stock brokers the EVE brokers will not work for free, and requires a fee. This fee is normall 1% of the order amount (with a minimum of 100 isk, which means a buy order for set up for a value 1000 isk will still have a 100 isk broker fee). Each level of the broker relations skill will lower the broker fee by 5% (So at Broker relations II the broker fee will be 0,9%). Note that the broker fee can be aditionally modified by your standings to the corporation/faction which owns the station in which you set up the order)

- Accounting (Requires Trade IV)

Each time you sell an item on the market (directly or by sell order) you will have to pay a sales tax of 1% of the total sell value. Each level of this skill reduces the sales tax by 10% (At Accounting V you will have reduced the sales tax to 0,5%). Note that the sales tax in paid in addition to any broker fees that might apply (see above).

- Daytrading (Requires Trade IV)

Once you have placed a buy and/or sell order you can modify them while you are in the same station as the order. This reuires no skills. What Daytrading does is enabling you to remotly modify your orders, which means that you can change buy/sell price of an order even if you are a few jumps away from the station in which the order was placed. At level V you will be able to modify your orders anywhere in the region in which you are located. This is a very handy skill which enables you to react better to fluctuations in the market.

- Marketing (Requires Trade II)

This enables you to remotly sell your items. Normally you will have to be at the same station as your item in order to sell it, the Marketing skill increases the range between you and the item at which you are able to sell it. If you have Marketing at II and you have an item in a hangar 4 jumps away from your current location you can now remotly sell it (either directly or by way of sell order)

- Procurement (Requires Trade II and Marketing II)

This is a mirror skill to Marketing. It allows you to place remote buy orders on the market. Each level of the skill increases the maximum distance between you and the station where you want your buy order placed. Note that you can allways buy directly from the market anywhere in the region, this skill only effects buy orders. Also note that in order for you to set up a remote buy order the item in question must be up for sale at the target station.

- Visability (Requires Trade II, Marketing II and Procurement IV)

This skill increases you remote by order range. When you place a station in which you are physically located you can select any buy order range you want (the range from the order station which you want your buy order to effect). When you place a remote order with Procurement you will need the Visability skill to be able to select any buy order range other than station. With the Visability skill at II you can place a remote buy order with the remote buy order range of 5 jumps. This might sound complicated, but play around with the prder settings in game and you will get the hang of it.

- Margin Trading (Requires Trade IV and Accounting IV)

When you place a buy order you will have to place the required amount of isk needed to complete the order in escrow, in essence it will be money will be locked down until the buy order is filled or until you cancel the order. The Margin Trading skill reduces the amount (by a percentage) of isk you will have to pay up front when you place a buy order by 25% each level after the first. This will allow you to keep your funds more mobile. The question we have to deal with now is "What happens if you don´t have the required amount of kredits when they buy order gets filled?" I´ve never tried this myself, but according to the official eve forums your order will be cancelled and you will lose the broker fee.

Trade Theory

Starting a career in trading is not as simple as running missions or mining, atleast not for me. There are a few important concepts you need to keep in mind when trading, this section will try to outline the basic "behind-the-keyboard" knowledge you will need to have.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Essential how much money you will earn if a given business transaction goes thru. If you buy gods for 100 million isk, and sell them for a total of 110 million, you will have had a 10% return on investment. A trader usually works with percentages setting their price, so you should be able to calculate a your probable ROI as you go along.

Return on Time (ROT)

How much isk do you get back on your investments over a set period of time? Calculate as ROI/[unit of time]. Naturally you will want this number to be as high as possible, as isk you have tied up in assets and goods is isk you can not reinvest.

When discussing ROI and ROT it might be good with the tried and true example of the little boy selling lemonade,

A little boy sits in a stand by the road selling lemonade, being the slick businessman he is he has priced is lemonade at a million dollars per glass. A man passing by asks if he expects to sell many glasses of lemonade at such a high price. The young boy looks up on and says "No, but I only need to sell one". Meanwhile the boy next door is raking in big bucks hand over fist selling his lemonade at a 10% mark-up.

Now the first boy will, if he ever sells a glass, have a very high ROI. But, the second boy working with a smaller ROI but a much higher ROT, making for more money in his pocket. Quality comes second to quantity in most cases in EVE trade.