Playing the Market

There are so many ways to make ISK in EVE, but so few that work for casual players. Fortunately the EVE market is a great place to make money, no matter how new the player. It's all about how much you put into it, and how well you manage your investments.


To start, we have to find a good trade hub to work out of. The major trade hubs of EVE are:

Jita (Caldari space)
Amarr (Amarr space)
Dodixie (Gallente space)
Rens (Minmatar space)
Hek (Minmatar space)

Each hub has it's own economy, and there are various ways to take advantage of this.

Jita is a great place to find everything you need cheap, and a good place to get items in quantity. On the down side, it is well known  to have many "market bots" and lots of scammers. If both of these terms are new to you, market bots are scripts that are run outside of the game to monitor the changes in the market, change them accordingly, and help the player make large amounts of ISK without even being at the computer. Scammers are various players that try to sell you things that benefits them, and not you. If you see a deal that's too good to be true, it usually is.

Amarr is probably one of the better hubs for market traders. While the prices are higher than Jita it isn't filled with market bots, and the potential to make money off it is great. Prices are great for buying and selling.

Dodixie is a more expensive hub due to it's location. This is a good place to get rid of goods at a higher margin, after buying low somewhere else. As for everything else, it's not a great place to buy at all.

Rens is probably the most expensive trade hub in all of EVE. Most everything there is sold at a much higher price than anything else, due to it's location. Since it's fairly far from just about anything else, and close to various low-sec and null-sec regions, the prices are quite high. Though, keep in mind that this is a great place to sell bulk items at increased prices. Unfortunately, doing such isn't as easy as it seems.

Hek isn't much different from Rens, aside from being a little cheaper. It's more of a hub to benefit the Minmatar population.

Out of all of them, I've found Amarr to be the best place to make ISK off the market. Jita is way too rough to keep up with the bots. Trust me, it will drive you mad. The rest of the hubs just don't have the demand to make a good amount of ISK. Now that we have that out of the way, let me explain how to put this to use. The whole idea is to buy low, and sell high. While you can make money off that alone, there are a few things to help make the final total even larger. First, let's go over how to analyse the market.

Here on the right I have an example of an item of interest. If you look you will see that the lowest price sell order is roughly around 1.5 million ISK. To make things better the highest buy order is a little over 400 thousand ISK. Basically, a 1m profit margin. Sounds great doesn't it? Turning every 400k into 1.5m in a very small amount of time, over and over. Of course before we even think about putting our buy order in, we need to research this a little more.

As you see here on this next image is the the price history table for this item. Each line shows the orders made for each day; how many orders were made, how many were actually sold, the lowest price order filled, the highest price order filled, and the average price for the day. First we want to make sure the item we're investing in has a demand. As you can see about 30 are sold each day, and you would think that would be good enough, but look a little closer. If someone was to buy these cannons to be used, they will usually be bought in lots of 4 to 7 at a time. So when we see a day where the number of orders match the quantity, and the price is low chances are they were all sold in buy orders. The other days you can see where people bought several at once, and on a weekend. Most of the time you want to find items that sell well on the weekend, as this gives you an edge on your sales. You can buy items low through the week, and sell high during the weekend. I'll cover that more in a minute, but first let's take a look at the market graph.

On the right again is the market graph. The red and green lines through the center are the 5 day and 20 day averages; just like the daily averages on the table. The green bars at the bottom of the graph tell how many of the said item have been sold each day. The yellow dots show the median day price, or the average price for the day. As you can see the median fluctuates each week lowering on weekdays, and raising on weekends. As for the red area behind it all, that is the Donchian channel. That shows us the actual demand for the item each day. As you see at the end of the graph, this item was in high demand, and the price started to rise due to the lack of lower cost sell orders. With that said, items like this will usually stay at the higher price for as long as a week, giving margin traders just long enough to get a few of these items through buy orders, and sell them at the inflated price.

Buy Orders
Now that we have that all out of the way let's put this all together to make a plan to make some ISK. Just like the item above, we can put a buy order in for 20 of the said item at 428k each. Each buy order should be set at the station for 3 months, as it doesn't cost any less or more (Immediate does make trades cheaper, but for buy orders this is useless). You really don't want to go fetch orders, so always set orders at the station. As for the amount, you want to keep your quantity low. If you want to buy more than 20, make another order for 20. Of course by now you're asking, "Why in the hell would I do that and not an order of 40?". Well there is a great reason. Other market traders will see orders larger than 10-20 as a threat, and will constantly raise the price on you, and sometimes by large amounts. When you keep the quantity down to 10 or 20, market traders might let your order fill before they raise their bids.

Price Increase
As for the price, NEVER increase your buy cost over 0.01 of the highest buy order. If you raise it more other traders will just make theirs 0.01 over yours, and whatever extra you put in has been tacked on to your bill. Remember to keep your cost low so that your profit is higher. This is a patience game. If a trader puts in an extremely expensive order for an item, let it go. You will probably notice other traders will ignore such buy orders, and wait for them to fill before adjusting their buy orders. The reason being lots of people will try to manipulate the buy order market by increasing the buy order cost, but most of the time they fail.

Sell Orders
Once you have obtained a few of whatever item through buy orders, they will be waiting for you at the station, and you can immediately place a bulk sell order, or save it for a good sell time like the weekend. Just like the buy orders, there is a method to the sell orders as well. If you look at that first image again, you'll see that I placed a sell order of 1which is 0.01 ISK less than the next highest sell order. The reason being is that it will not sell any quicker if I make it less. If I make it much less, a trader will probably pick it up and re-list it, but why should you lose out on that extra ISK? Every little bit counts when it comes to the market. Just like the buy orders, if there is a low priced sell order for a small quantity, avoid trying to make your price lower, as it will eventually sell anyways. If it's a large quantity, always make sure to make your sell order less. Large orders are what set the average, and it will be awhile before the price is higher. If you see other orders that are really low, you can always pick them up yourself. As long as the consumer doesn't get it at that price, all is good. Simply re-list those at the price you want it.

Summary
Overall, this is an easy way to make ISK in EVE. Like I said earlier it is a game of patience. One of the best ways I've found items to buy and sell, was to fully loot and salvage a level 4 mission, and take all the items back to Amarr to sell. That's exactly how I found the 800mm Heavy Carbine's to take example pictures with. Of course now that you know what to look for, you might find yourself spotting deals like this when being the consumer. I apologize if there are parts that are hard to follow. Comment with your questions, and I'll be happy to revise the article as needed for clarity. Enjoy, and happy trading!