Training Report - March 2014

Training report for 25 March 2014

It's been a while since I've done a training report so here's another.

First some numbers:

12 Accounts
29 Characters

26 Traders (23 active, 3 spares, all finished training trade skills)
21 (out of 23 total) Empire regions covered by traders

5 Covert Ops pilots
23 Blockade Runner pilots (3 more in training)
2 Tengu pilots
1 Recon pilot
1 Rattlesnake pilot
29 Vigil pilots =)

16 PLEX per month (12 subscriptions with 4 accounts dual training)

I work a mix of regional and station trading with a fair bit of hauling and courier contracts between regions. I'm always moving up market (dropping cheaper items and replacing them with more expensive items).

I train my traders for 305 orders with the following trade skills: Trade V, Retail V, Wholesale V, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading V, Marketing V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting IV (6,716,785 SP). I consider them to be "finished" training trade skills at that point.

Account 1

3 fully trained traders, all flying Blockade Runners, covering Essence, Tash-Murkon and Verge Vendor Regions. Currently finishing up training flying support skills on the last one.

Future plans: Continue training navigation, capacitor, shield and fitting skills for another week or two on the last character. Will probably start training them all into Cyno V and Covert Ops after that.

Account 2

The traders of Amarr, Dodixie and Rens. All 3 characters are finished training trade skills. Also finished training Capacitor, Navigation, Engineering and Shield skills on all 3 characters to mostly Vs and a few IVs. Two are Covert Ops pilots, all three are Blockade Runner Pilots.

Future plans: Will probably train them all into Cyno V next and one into Industry eventually.

Account 3

dual training active

Lonetrek Regional Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Covert Ops and Blockade runner pilot. Currently training Capacitor Management V.

Jita Station Trader #2 -  Finished training skills. Does nothing but trade officer/deadspace/faction mods. Not currently training.

The Bleak Lands Regional Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Blockade Runner pilot. Currently training Int/Mem flying support skills.

Future plans: Continue training support skills on The Bleak Lands trader. Once Lonetrek is finished training Capacitor Management, start training blockade runners and int/mem support skills on the Jita trader.

Account 4

dual training active

Jita Station Trader #1 - Finished training trade skills. Blockade Runner pilot. Does nothing but trade skill-books. This is the only character that still deals in very many items worth less than 20 million ISK. Currently training Int/Mem support skills.

Exploration / Scout / Scanning pilot - Flies Covert Ops (Buzzard), Recon (Falcon), Tengu and is working towards Black Ops. Has Astrometrics V, all the rest of the astrometrics skills at IV and most shield, navigation, fitting, EW and exploration skills at IV or V. I don't plan on doing any serious trading on this character. He has 29 order slots, more than enough to buy things he needs and that's it. He's about finished training Int/Mem skills (including Jump skills) and will remap Per/Wil soon to start training Missile skills, Caldari Battleships and eventually Black Ops.

Future plans: Remap Per/wil  to train Caldari Battleships, Black Ops and Missile skills. Will eventually start a new character on this account.

Account 5

Dual training active

My Main - Covert Ops, Tengu, Rattlesnake pilot with all racial Battlecruiser and Destroyer skills at V. Concentrating mainly on Per/Wil combat skills, with particular focus on missile skills (nearly 12 mil SP in missiles). 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Accounting IV, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading IV and all of the "remote order" trade skills at IV. He hasn't been involved much in trade for some time now.

Currently training Heavy Assault Missiles V

Orvolle Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Blockade Runner pilot. Nearly finished training Int/Mem support skills.

Future plans: My main is finally nearly finished training subcap Missile skills now (nearly 12 million SP in missiles). He can use all T2 subcap launchers with IVs in missile specialization skills and Vs in all missile support skills. Remapped Int/Mem today and started training Jump skills for Black Ops (already has Minmitar Battleship V). Eventually he'll probably train Recon Cruisers, HACs, Interdictors and HICs too. I'll probably start a 3rd character on this account after the Orvolle trader finishes with Int/Mem skills..

Account 6

Hek Station Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Covert Ops and Blockade Runner pilot. Not currently training.

Jita trader #4 - Finished training Trade skills. Handles the Jita implants market and dabbles a little in other markets. Not currently training.

Devoid Trader - Finished training trade skills. Blockade Runner pilot. Currently training Int/Mem support skills.

Future plans: Finish training int/mem support skills on the new trader. Once that's finished, get Blockade Runners on the Jita trader too.

Accounts 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

accounts 7 and 9 have dual training active

Six accounts I started just before the news about dual training broke. They're all trader / blockade runner pilots following the same training plan.

All six original characters are finished training trade skills, fly Blockade Runners and are either finished or nearly finished training flying support skills (mainly Navigation, Engineering and Shield skills).

All 6 accounts also have 2nd characters that are finished training trade skills and in various stages of training blockade runners and int/mem support skills. All but one are following the same skill plan of training Trade skills (along with a few days worth of basic flying skills) first, then Blockade Runners and finally topping up Int/Mem support skills.

One character is following essentially the same training plan except he's training Blockade Runners and Int/Mem support skills *before Trade skills for a change.

9 of the 12 characters on these accounts are active traders, the other 3 are basically spare traders that aren't actually doing any trading right now.

Sweet Sisters Deal

Another blunder

I got a sweet deal on some Sisters launchers today due to another player's mistake. It was probably intended to be an extreme lowball buy order that got accidentally entered as a sell order instead.

Normally I don't post the name of the player making a mistake but since I recognized the name this time I couldn't resist.

The New Genesis

Someone finally posted about how good doing business in Genesis has been since they added new level 3 and 4 Sister's of Eve agents at Apanake and Simela.

Back in January I had mentioned business in Genesis was experiencing a big growth spurt but I didn't go into details because Genesis has been by far my best source of cheap Sisters Launchers (among other things) ever since.

With the cat out of the bag I figured I might as well post some screenshots showing how good business is since it's bound to get more competitive now.

Though I buy a lot of Sisters Launchers in Genesis I don't sell a whole lot there. Most of the ones I buy get exported to other regions and sold for higher prices.

Business throughout the whole region has been extremely good ever since the new sisters agents were added several months back. Plenty of PvE players moved into the area to farm SoE loyalty points causing overall business in the region to increase by 300 billion in under 4 months.

Apanake (level 4 Sisters agent) in particular has seen massive growth, very quickly growing from a tiny out of the way backwater into the largest mission and market hub in the region.

Genesis is a terrific place to set up business in now. IMO, there's still plenty of room for new traders to open for business in the region. Besides Apanake, Tar, Simela and even Gergish are good systems to set up shop in.

Don't forget to read that link at the top of this post, there's plenty of good information in it.

Big Months and Big Blunders

Imagine my surprise when I fired up JeveAssets a few days ago and saw I'd made 41 billion overnight and 75 billion on the month so far with the month not even half over yet.

Something had to be wrong. There's no way I made that much overnight unless virtually all my extreme lowball orders in several different regions got filled at once and that's just not going to happen.

Then I noticed this.

What?! 46 billion in sell orders on just one character? Definitely something wrong there. That character shouldn't have had more than 5 or 6 billion in sell orders. Checking a bit further I found this.

A 41 billion ISK sell order... It was supposed to be 198 thousand ISK each, not 198 million ISK each. A silly typo that cost me 313 million in broker fees.

A few hours later someone actually bought one at that price which mitigated most of the loss incurred.

If anyone really wants to know the name of my Amarr trader this is your big chance. All you have to do is buy one of my Upgraded EM Ward Amps too. =)

The Only Good Goon is a Dead Goon

I don't like goons. I don't like what they stand for, where they come from or anything about them other than the fact that they make good targets..

For a long time I've been wanting to do something to help encourage the hunting, killing, pruning of their numbers and hopefully the eventual extinction of goons. A while back I tried encouraging some goon killing fun by sponsoring a contest with billions in prizes available. That was a complete failure, nobody entered the contest so no prizes were handed out.

While my first attempt might have failed miserably I still want to see more dead goons so now I'm asking reader's for ideas. How could I (and my ISK) help encourage you, your fleet, corp, or for that matter any non-goon, to hunt and kill goons?

I'm willing to consider just about anything (feel free to think outside the box). Sponsoring wardecs, fleet reimbursement programs, contests, events, long term projects and one off events, as long as it leads to lots of dead goons (the more the better).

Give me some ideas and I'd be happy to throw some ISK at it to make something happen.

Financial Report - February 2014

Financial report for the month of February 2014 (last month). Trade oriented since trading is how I make virtually all of my ISK.

I buy and sell faction/deadspace/officer mods, ships, skill-books and implants with traders covering all 5 main trade hubs (Jita, Amarr, Dodixie,  Hek and Rens) plus secondary hubs in most other empire regions. I have 23 active traders, 3 on Jita (one each for mods, implants and skillbooks), 20 more with each covering a different region and a few more in training.

February is the shortest month of the year and I didn't spend very much time working the market this month but my net worth was still up 29 billion after expenses.

I decreased the amount of time I spent working the market again this month. In February I only spent about 10 hours in total and less than 2 hours before the 17th. That's 5 or 6 times less work than last month but I still made 58% as much. Not bad at all, especially not when considering I used over 7 billion worth of PLEX on subscriptions this month and 0 last month.

A lot of my business (probably over half my monthly profits) is now in playing longer term trends on a fairly small number of high volume (relative to the price), high priced items. Those items tend to perform similarly whether I post and update their orders once a week, once a day or even several times a day. My business in those items doesn't drop off very much when I spend less time working things though the business in just about everything else does drop off significantly.

Current net worth is 459 billion with about half in cash and market escrow. Most of the rest is in sell orders and recently acquired stock I haven't gotten around to posting for sale yet. Very little is in assets I don't intend to sell soon, with maybe 4 billion worth of ships and mods I keep for my own use and a small stockpile of PLEX worth another 5-10 billion.

That's my actual current total net worth, I don't pad the numbers by talking about profit made before expenses, adding that up as a running total and only mentioning expenses as an afterthought. My numbers are (and have always been) my actual current net worth after expenses.