If I've understood this correctly it basically boils down to "buy minerals when they're cheaper" (and/or "sell freighters when they're expensive")?

I've two issues with this as an approach; the first is that it essentially becomes an excercise in mineral trading rather than manufacturing - if all I'm going to do is make mineral price bets on what the basket will look like 24 days from now then why bother with the manufacturing stage, why not just trade minerals. I've also always considered the stance of "the goods I make are cheaper because I get raw materials cheaper" to be the stealthy brother of "the minerals I mine are free".


The second issue is purely a cash flow one. Now I've only recorded price inputs every 12 days when a batch goes in/out but looking through my history, the last time a batch saw minerals at such a price as to acheive a modest 100m profit on a charon sold at today's prices (roughly 3m isk per slot per day) would have been 31st March.

Now, undoubtedly there are bigger outfits out there who can cover that sort of cash flow, but I have to doubt it would be worth the risk - current operations see 20b committed in minerals either in production, sat on sell orders as finished goods, or available to buy the next batch of minerals, I add to that a further 5b cash flow reserve to allow one batch to sit on sell order 12 days further if market requires (ie. to ride it out), add to that the roughly 15b worth of cap prints and we're already looking at an operation that is holding 40b hostage. Adding a further month and a half's mineral reserves would add another c.15b to that reserve, essentially turning a (pessemistic) 3% ROI per month investment into a 2.2% ROI per month.

Traders are middlemen, I'd rather not have my isk tied up in merchandise when I can have it producing something. Would I make more isk with sell orders? My margins would certainly be higher, but from past experience my isk per hr would be lower. Certainly that could change in the future.