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 24 active traders, 3 on Jita (one each for mods, implants and skillbooks), 2 in another region, another 19 each covering a different region and a couple spare traders that are not actively trading.
In May, I made a profit of 54 billion after expenses (about 65 billion before expenses). That's a new monthly record for me!
Current net worth is 598 billion with roughly half in cash and market escrow. Most of the rest is in sell orders and recently acquired assets 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 fittings I keep for my own use.
your monthly reports impress me every time i read them!
ReplyDeleteHow much (active) time on average do you think you spend each day? (i assume you do plenty AFK as well which does not really count as active time).
Generally speaking I spend 1 to 2 hours a day most days but not every day. There are days I only spend maybe 10 minutes in total and sometimes I do that for a week or so. More rarely there are days where I'll spend 3 hours or so at it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes there's plenty of AFK time too... A lot of times I autopilot while I go watch TV or do some work. Spend a minute or so setting up a 10+ jump trip, put it on auto, leave the room and come back half an hour later. Spend another minute setting up the next leg of the trip, rinse and repeat until finished. When he's finished picking up everything worth picking up (I don't usually bother picking anything up worth less than 40 million or so), I'll spend a few minutes posting it and maybe update a few orders on my best items.
A character might be logged in for several hours or sometimes even for most of the day but I'm only actually at the computer doing something on it for a few minutes at a time.
I'll usually be multiboxing 2 characters at a time doing that. When I'm finished with one I log another in and until I've had enough of it for the day.
I rarely update more than 20 or 30 orders at a time on any one character now and when I do it's usually because a bunch will be expiring in a week or two.
I should add using autopilot the way I do is really only viable flying Blockade Runners. Flying on auto with anything very valuable onboard is much more dangerous if you're not flying a BR.
ReplyDeleteDo you haul with most of your traders as well? You stated that you fly on autopilot mostly with frigates, arent you losjng a lot through random ganks? Also, i guess you trained Accounting and Broker Rekations to V on all your traders, but do you care about the faction/station standing? I only trade between the larger hubs an I am astounded by yohr numbers. Thats almost 2B per day you are naking there!
ReplyDeleteAll of my traders also haul. It's been a long time since did my hauling in frigates (Vigils), all my traders fly Blockade Runners now and have been doing so for some time. I lost 1 or 2 Vigils a month before but I haven't lost a single BR on autopilot yet (I did lose one in lowsec but that wasn't on auto).
DeleteI have most trading skills at V, including Accounting and Broker Relations and no I don't care about faction standings. The most important skill to have at V though is Margin Trading, it greatly increases my buying power, allowing me to place buy orders for about 5 times as much as I could without the skill.
Yup, nearly 2 billion a day *after expenses (mostly PLEX purchases for subs and dual training) and over 2 billion *before expenses. Mind you last month was the first time I did that.
First, sorry for the horrible typos in my first comment. Writing via smartphone in the morning while waiting for the bus was a silly idea.
ReplyDeleteI recently lost a prowler recently one jump outside Hek, carrying almost 1BN in implants to a suicide ganker. Lucky bastard also found that all my cargo dropped for him. It was all my fault as well, as I usually fly them manually especially with that kind of cargo, but this one time I just didn't hit the jump to button and tabbed out for not longer than a minute, enough time to be well into hull when I finally tabbed back.
Checking his killboard, he made a habit of ganking BR near the main hubs. At least a ganker who's taking his chances.
Regardless, after this incident I thought about switching to heavily buffer tanked and nullifyied cloaky tengu or proteus when hauling cargo north of 1BN isk. More training time and initial investment, but even one lost BR with full cargo pays for a well fitted tengu. And good luck trying to chew threw that kind of EHP.
My strategy so far is to have one dedicated trader in every hub (rarely or never undocking), with another char being the dedicated hauler. Together with public courier contracts, this char does all the hauling.
Once I feel I can't add much volume to this constellation, I will spread out into other regions like you do with your secondary hub traders.
Keep up the good work, the numbers are surely impressive. I would lose track of the prices of the items I bought, especially if they sit for longer than a few days. How do you know at which prices you bought an item, so that you're not listing them way too low, or too high? I though jEveAssets wasn't that powerful of a tool.
The Deltole/Aufay/Balle chain on the route between Hek and Dodixie is one of the worst 0.5 gank camps around. It's a good idea to fly that chain manually when you can.
DeleteThe problem with the tanked Tengu is they can scan your cargo and know exactly what you're carrying. Besides that it's a lot slower and has a much smaller cargo capacity. I actually had 2 Tengus I used for transport before I got my first Prowler. I like the Prowlers a whole lot better.
You don't need to keep track of what you paid for everything, however if it's being sold on the same character it was bought on you can always look in your journal to find out. Sometimes you have to sell something at a loss to make more ISK.
If you refuse to take a small loss when prices drop, then you'll eventually wind up with all your ISK tied up in items that aren't selling and not making anything. If you take the loss, you get the ISK back to reinvest in something profitable (like the same item at a lower buy price).
Another thing I'd like to add, that I find intriguing about the way you trade: You stated that you do not use spreadsheets or any third party program other than jEveAssets, thus you have no definite way of knowing hoch much profit or loss you made on a particular trade.
ReplyDeleteThis allows you, I think, to trade very aggressively and the nature of the inter regional trading in this game, where I guess the bulk of your trade volume comes from, currently allows for very high margins usually well north of 20%. These margins allow for deep and aggressive undercutting, while most of the time still turning a healthy profit per trade.
In Eve, unless you do T1 manifacturing, the high ISK per item trade seems to be driven more by fast turnover of capital, rather than maximizing the profit per trade. Your Playstyle simply supports this psychologically: If you can't know exactly how much you win or lose with a trade, you can freely focus on making a deal.
I trade very aggressively by design, it's completely intentional. Deep undercuts are the norm for me, though when margins are slim (and they usually are on my best items) I'll often use small cuts, especially on high volume items.
DeleteThere are of course exceptions but most of my sales are well under 20%. In fact my best, most profitable items in terms of total profit are usually in the 5-10% profit margin range.
Yes exactly, making big total profits is more about turnover and volume than about big profit margins per trade. I don't worry about exactly how much I win or lose on a trade because it really doesn't matter. It's like playing poker in a way, as long as I make more on the wins than I lose on the losses I'm ahead of the game.
Poker playing may seem like a bad analogy but really it's not. Think of it this way.
DeletePlaying poker is considered gambling and for many it is but is a good poker player, one who makes a living at it, really gambling?
I don't think so. He's not gambling, he's playing the odds, wins more than he loses and never bets everything he has on one hand no matter how good it is. A gambler is a player who doesn't know (or ignores) the odds, counts on "luck" and makes bets he can't afford to lose.
That's how I approach the market, I take calculated risks and accept that taking risk means I'll lose at times but as long as I win more than I lose, that's fine. It's just another cost of doing business.