Greedy Goblin

Friday, June 29, 2012

June business report

My last business report wasn't the happiest post on the blog. The linear and quadratic fit of my wealth vs time graph barely differed. While 508M/day average income wasn't bad, reaching some daily limit was scary: it would mean that you can't really make big money using your capital. You can only farm, turning time into ISK, and even if trading pays better than ratting (like 300M/hour), it's still just another grind.

However I merely reached the limits of the skillbook hauling I did back then. One of the reasons of rigorous bookkeeping is forcing you to move on. Without those charts I'd probably ran around with the same books watching my wealth grow, being satisfied by being more rich than most. But after seeing that it's nearly linear, I tossed my proven and reliable method and tried something that could end up in large loss. Well, it didn't. The wealth increase of the last month was 40.8B, 1.36B/day, about 450M/active play hour. No, I'm not satisfied. But it's definitely looking better:
The difference between the linear and quadratic fit is obvious and the latter fits to the data well, both visually, and according to the R2 of the fit. I'd like to emphasize how important this non-linearity is. It proves that trading isn't just the "most profitable grind", but it's providing capital-limited investment profit. The more money I have, the more I make without increasing time spent making money.

Now let's see what the fitted curves says about the future:
This chart runs until 2013. Feb. 16, my first birthday. According to this, I have a serious chance to be a trillionaire before that. I'll surely have - even according to the linear fit - money for not one, but two titans. Maybe I should start a titan sitter for my backup titan. After all in EVE you shall have a spare ship to be able to return battle instantly if your first ship blows up.

However the most inspirational chart is the one that displays the logarithm of my wealth vs time:
The results can be well fitted with a linear trendline. That means that the growth is actually not quadratic but - as it should be with investments - exponential with the growth factor of e0.0276x = 1.028x. 2.8% daily profit. That's 129% monthly increase or in other words I double my capital in every 25 days. Of course this won't stay this way as I'll soon stop being capital limited, but it's still a nice proof that trading is indeed investment and not farming.

I hope that these clearly prove the power in trading and make those of you who consider ISK-making a grind to switch to it from ratting, mining, missioning. Of course, if you like those ways, you shouldn't! You can significantly increase their income by re-investing money into more accounts doing it. It will never be like trading, but will be OK. If you are convinced and want to start getting your titan before the end of the year, join the goblinworks channel to get your questions answered. The business I currently use will be disclosed in my July 15 "blogging my profit away" post in full detail. Until then some hints: small but expensive items traded in all hubs, daily turnover, total gank safety (hauling is done by collateraled contracts).


Friday morning report (not included to the charts above): 70.4B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on Logi, 1.0 on Titan, 0.5 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx)

16 comments:

chequers said...

My guess: ammo.

Nobody pays attention to the cost, as long as it's low enough.

Nomazar said...

What really puzzles me is Goblin's look to trading as a fun activity. It just an other grind after all. Only good about it that your daily grind routine is limited by your capital. Login in, toss buy and sell orders around, organise shipping and logoff. Hunting for new markets is probably only fun part which required brains. Everything else is just mindless button clicking.

Anonymous said...

there is something pleasurable about fucking over .01 punks.

when they throw down "39,999.99" to your 40k, then you just take the party down to 35

plus, only the buyer is winning, eh?

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't your fit be an exponential rather than quadratic? What is the mathematical reason to use quadratic?

Gevlon said...

Excel can't fit exponential right: they use a*e^(b*x) instead of a*e^(b*x) + c
I can't be bothered to code a non-linear fit.

Buggrit said...

Your blog repeatedly shows the fact that parts of the population are simply unable to talk, because they do not have the common ground to discuss.

What for you is the game, for them is grind, and vice-versa.

Maybe whats needed is different killboards, or proofs of achievement: pvp solo kills, sov kills, trade profit, rats killed, whatever ticks their boat.

If its not a score it doesn't count, far as many are concerned.

Gevlon said...

@Buggrit: there is an objective win criteria: who can ENFORCE his "fun concept" on the others by destroying theirs using his own.

Simple example: if killboard-junkies hold a gank-hunt on my haulers and kill my business, they won as my fun is over and they had fun.

If I use this ISK to form an organization that cleans up parts of the space from them by blobbing, I won, they lost.

Anonymous said...

just for the record I think he is aluding trading plexes. nice work if so. although there is probably a limit to how far that market will go, just like the skillbook ceiling.

Anonymous said...

@gevlon (posting this in a separate comment as I don't mind if you don't post it as it's not entirely relevant to your actual blog post)

you keep mentioning "fun". I don't know about you but I play eve not so much for fun but for the sense of accomplishment (for want of a better term) I blogged about the phenomenon it here:
http://evemonkey.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/non-eve-chillout/

I suspect that you may have similar feelings about eve Vs other types of games. anyway, just thoughts.

Anonymous said...

Moving back to the old question - let's asusme that it is highly probable you will be trillionare in one year. Then you will have 3 trillions next year and so on.

Is that it? Your goal after having more money is to have more money? In a sov holding game? Make four alts each able to flight a different race titan and spin them over in space?

NP said...

Has it been your experience that you need to change markets at each doubling of wealth or so? your July 15th post should be illustrative. I had a recent double from 200 to 400 mil, and many of my markets aren't cutting it anymore.

I'm curious as to the non-capital limitations, especially ones you may have already hit but "solved" through finding a larger or more efficient market.

Anonymous said...

enough charts & graphs & hand-waving... what the hell are you trading that's netting you a billion ISK a day???????????

Gevlon said...

@first anon: I wrote my purpose. To win the game.

@Second one: post will be up on July 15

Mal said...

"there is an objective win criteria: who can ENFORCE his "fun concept" on the others by destroying theirs using his own."

So your goal to win the game is to be able to force your fun concept on every other eve player in all areas of space at the same time, basically?

I like your blog because you don't think small, but I'm wondering if either I'm misinterpreting your goal or if it is futile. In a game where CCP will always have more influence than you will and they constantly make changes to game mechanics, is it possible to impose your will on the entirety of player base?

Anonymous said...

"small but expensive items traded in all hubs, daily turnover, total gank safety (hauling is done by collateraled contracts)."

daily turnover... but you have others haul for you, so its not instantaneous station-trading... which means the market moves slowly enough that it doesn't dry up while the goods are in-transit.

also, significant mark-up so that the taxes and broker fees don't eat you alive.

I'm not seeing it. I'm having a hard time finding anything to trade in that doesn't have razor-thin margins with dozens of people 0.01-isking constantly.

Sega said...

Gevlon, an important issue: in your daily business report, how do you value your stock? There is a key difference between valueing it at the price you bought it for or at the price you're expecting to sell it at.