Mineral Trading

This is one of the most dangerous but rewarding careers in Eve Online.  The amount of isk you can earn and lose in one day is just staggering.  It is extremely important that a trader knows what they are doing before attempting to tackle this kind of trading.  The risk of losing massive amounts of isk are a lot higher then the average type of trading.

Mineral trading can be defined as the buying and selling of massive amounts of minerals.  Minerals are defined as the regular stuff like Tritanium, moon minerals, the advanced components of moon minerals, all the isotopes, and finally all of the planetary interaction stuff.  Check the bottom of this post for a full list.

How To Profit

There are multiple ways to profit off of trading minerals, and as always it is necessary to find a niche that works for you.  Mineral traders usually only hang out in Jita, it has the highest volume.  Here are some of the common ways traders profit off mineral trading.

3 Common Methods

Immediate Turn Around - This is attempting to profit off the immediate margins that an item may have already.  The moment that an item is bought it is back up for sale.  For example trit is has buy orders for 3.00isk and sell orders for 3.20isk.  This means that it has a margin of .20isk.

Weekly Spread - Certain items simply cost more during certain times of the week, the most notable is the weekend.  Things are simply bought up on the weekend, and the next time a alliance will unload moon minerals on the market might be during the week.  The idea is to buy stuff when it is general cheaper and sell when it is more expensive.  Reading the market graph and looking for patterns is key.

Patch Day Speculation - This method involves having some sort of insider knowledge about a up-coming patch, or exploiting some information as soon as it is released to the populaces.  For example, if they were reducing the amount of titanium in Veldspar, then the price of titanium should go up.  The key here is to be quick.

Mineral Trading Broken Down

Moon Minerals -They are a beast all on their own.  They can have huge margins, or no margins.  Alliance may drop massive amounts on the market driving the price down temporary.  The trading elite might be in the mist of a massive market manipulation attempt.  This market is generally considered extremely volatile.

Planetary Interaction Good - They are the little retarded brother of moon minerals.  They have a lot of verity so it is a good idea to look at the volume that the specific PI good is trading at.  They can have nice margins and be relatively stable.  There is heavy competition in this market, and a huge profit margin can be whittled away to nothing before anything is even sold.

Isotopes/POS fuel - They have quick turn around, and its pretty easy to pick up significant quantities of the stuff.  The problem is that everyone knows that pos fuel is hot, and the margins are terrible.  The key here is to keep an eye on this stuff and make sure to jump into the fray whenever the margins are decent.

Regular Minerals - These have a pretty stable price per region. The trick with these is to find a supply of cheap mineral and then haul them to Jita.  The problem is that even with a full freighter of Titanium, the profit will still be really low.  Remember freighters are also ungodly slow.