Greedy Goblin

Thursday, May 24, 2012

A market I won't miss

One of the things I tried out in the last week was trading +5 implants. Any time you check on them, you find the average price somewhere around 115M and the difference between buy and sell orders to be 8-10M. After broker fees and (old) taxes you could make 8M on a sale on average. The quantity is huge, in Jita 100+ sold every day, 50+ in the other hubs. That's a perfect item to get really rich, right?

Surprisingly the answer is "yes, but not for me". The problem is that the prices fluctuate a lot within the same day and there are 20M humps on the price history graph. So your plan is to log in, see that Cybernetic implant is for 120M sell, 110M buy, you set up a buy order, log out, next time list the item for 120? Forget it. Next time you either find the market at 120/130, with your buy order is unfilled of course, or you got the implant and find the prices to be 100/110.

The reason is simple: both the buyers and the sellers are individuals with no market knowledge and even less patience. He got the implant from the LP store and want to cash it. Now. Or, he wants to pull a new alt and fit it with full +5 set. Now.

The 2-3 week long "humps" are made by those who find the item good for cashing LP. Then the item becomes the "LP-cashier of the week", everyone start using it, dumping the price, moving to the next.

Since the margin between buys and sells is there, you can make the profit. There are two ways and neither one fits mine. The first is that you decide that you'll buy on 110, sell on 120 and invest in 5 items. You set up the buy order at 110, regardless price and wait. Some time it will fill. Maybe in a minute, maybe a week from now, but the price will swing to that number. Then you set the sell for 120 and wait. It will sell. Again, maybe in a minute, maybe a week from now. "Maybe" isn't my favorite word and if I assume that the distance between buy and sell is 5 days on average, with (old) taxes I make 49% profit on the capital every month. No thanks, that's veldspar money (not mining you silly, buying via regional orders and courier contract them to Jita).

The other way to make money here is sitting by the market window and updating the orders, keeping like 100K distance from the second highest. If you buy, instantly sell and make sure you are the lowest seller. This way you can farm OK-ish money every hour. I could get up to 90M/hour with only 1B investment (one is in buy, one in sale, 5 implants), if we translate this to profit/capital/month we get some stellar number, but we can't as it's not investment profit but farming. No doubt that 90M/hour farming totally safely is good money. But I hate farming and hate nothing more than being bound to the computer. My business ways are all designed to allow me to AFK or log out any time I want.

Before you'd have ideas about grabbing 10B+ capital and enforce monopolistic prices by buying out everything below your price and relisting above, I remind you that since it's an LP item, it can be produced in near-infinite quantities, so if you rise the price, you'll be flooded with thousands.

So here is a field with lot of money and surely no competition from me. If you have large unused capital or don't mind updating prices every 5 mins, +5 implants are your best pick.

The more general advice today: ISK/capital/month and ISK/hour isn't the only metric. The business must fit your schedule and taste. There are so many fields and items, there is one for everyone. With real life example: just because plastic surgeons make good money, you don't have to be one to be rich. There is money in finance, industry, agriculture, everywhere. You don't have to stick to anything or "trade X or doing it wrong". Find your own items and get rich without doing anything annoying.


EVE Business report: Thursday morning 26.6B. (0 PLEX behind for second account, 1.1B spent on triage carrier alt)
Don't forget to join the goblinworks channel to discuss trading and industrial ideas and laugh on the morons of the day (50-80 people on peak hours).

2 comments:

ninetenths said...

Was this the market for +5 attribute implants or 5% hardwirings?

Gevlon said...

+5 int and such