Trade 101 - Basic Mechanics

I guess this is part two of the stuff I have to get out of the way.  The mechanics of trading are a little bit hard to grasp. The market is divided between buyers and sellers.  Players put up "buy orders" for items, and another player can fill this order.  They can also decide to put things up for sale, and hope someone comes along and buys it.

The first thing anyone should do is orient yourself.  The comparison here is the overview.  A pvp pilot won't try to pvp with a screwed up overview, and a miner won't try to mine without having asteroids in their overview.  Why would a trader have a screwy looking market tab.

To get started, when you open up your market you will see two sections, buyers on the bottom and sellers on top.  Generally, you want to orient yourself so you see the cheapest sellers and the most expensive buyers.  You do this by clicking on "Price".

Now to explain the BASIC concept of trading.  You put up a "buy order" so that your offering the most amount of money for a item, and then putting it up for sale so your the lowest "sell order".  The easiest way to explain this would be taking a item, we will say hulks.  Lets pretend that there are hulks for sale for 197m, 196m, and 195.9m isk. and buy orders for 150m and 151m.    This means that there is a gap of 35m, which could be your profit.  There is also the variable of range which will be discussed later.

Buy Orders and sell orders ALWAYS get filled by price.  A player will ALWAYS buy the cheapest ship (even if they want to play more) and sell to the most expensive buy order.  So if we use our hulk example: If you put up a buy order for 151m - .01 isk, then your order wont be filled until the 151m is filled.  If you put up a buy order for 151m +.01 isk, then your order will be filled first.

The issue of range is the other major variable.  Your buy orders can have a range of "region", and anyone in the region can fill your order.  The problem is that items don't magically move, so if you buy something 10 jumps away you have to go 10 jumps to go and get it.

I realize that I probably butchered the mechanics of trading, but this has been explained so many times before.  I figure I will just post links.


I recommend reading:
http://eve.grismar.net/wikka.php?wakka=TradeBasics - good and simple explanation

Trade 101 - Skills

Where to begin?  I guess the most logical place is to start in the beginning, but that has been done to death.  Who really wants to reread all the same stuff, over and over.  I guess the problem is I don't know what the average eve player knows about trade.  I guess this is one of those things that just has to be done so everyone is in the same page.  Those of you that already know all these, bear with me.

Trade is mostly about information, but skills matter.  There have been multiple attempts to turn 5k isk into 1 billion isk in just 30 days. The most notable attempt was by Bouncer Ricdic. This lead to various competitions and spin offs, but the problem is the amount of work they have to put into trading to make it work.  Do yourself a favor and train some trade skills.What skills, though, really depends on what kind of trading you are going to do.  Which is another post for another day.

Recommended:

Accounting Level 5 - Saves money from fees when selling things.
Broker Relations Level 5 - Saves money from fees when buying and selling things.
Margin Trading Level 3-4 - Each level takes ~25% off the amount you put in escrow when you put up a buy order.

Trade Slots:
Trade - 4 per level
Retail - 8 per level
Wholesale - 16 per level (Requires Retail 5)
Tycoon - 32 per level (Requires Wholesale 5)

Depends:

Day Trading level 4 - Lets you modify sell orders you already have up within 20 jumps. (level 5 for region-wide)
Marketing Level 4 - Lets you place things within 20 jumps up for sale. (level 5 for region-wide)
Procurement Level ? - I don't use this skill, but it lets you place remote buy orders.
Visibility Level ? - I don't use this skill but lets you extend the range of your REMOTE (Procurement) buy orders.

Those that are interested in more details about skills can read a pretty good explanation in this forum post. I will cover the basic mechanics of buy and sell orders in Trade 102 - Basic Mechanics.