Yes.

The repetitiveness of it depends on what type of station trading you do, it can range from manipulations (less repetitive) to 0.01ing at the other end.

Most people consider station trading to be only 0.01ing.
Most people are wrong :p

Thanks for the replies :)

I agree that trying to undercut the competition by 0.01 isk can be very repetitive. I guess I am doing it wrong.

How does market manipulation work? And can you do it with ~1b isk?

its basicly artificialy changeing the prices of things be it running the price down with ur order taking chuncks off the sell price. when people follow you down in price keep going until ur hapy then buy up all the sell orders and then relist :) same with buh orders pricethm up people folow you until ur happy then dump ur stock on the market :)

That explains a lot. Thank you.

Current consensus is that station/interstation trading is the most proffitable proffesion in eve if you have enough capital.

Current consensus is that station/interstation trading is the most proffitable proffesion in eve if you have enough capital.

If you have under 1b in capital, spam scamming is the most lucrative profession.

corp infiltration and theft, Ponzi schemes, etc

No idea how you can consider it a consensus when nobody cares to disclose actual figures -- isk/month and isk/hour and ROI. Traders who know little else other than comparing to missioners/miners/etc who grind like suckers swear by it, others scoff.

If you have under 1b in capital, spam scamming is the most lucrative profession.

thereis a lot more to it but tryed to break it do to doh level :). its realy a learn as you go thing trading you going to loose some money to start with and gain some. I sugest you start with x amount say 500m or a 1bil if ya got it spare tho ya realy dont need that much. i started with 100m isk now got around 20b liquid over the space of a year or so and i dont trade 24/7 jsut when i can and i try to stay away from 0.01 isking becasue that drives me mad. buy it low sell it at a mark up iam happy with and just leave it to sell adusting if needed.

No idea how you can consider it a consensus when nobody cares to disclose actual figures -- isk/month and isk/hour and ROI. Traders who know little else other than comparing to missioners/miners/etc who grind like suckers swear by it, others scoff.

The lack of actual figures lead me to believe it may not have been a good idea to get into station trading. I'm glad that's not the case :)


I want to stay away from scams. With so many scammers around, honesty and trust may turn out to be invaluable in the long run.


20b sounds like music to my ears. I made myself a list of high-volume and high-margin items and I made about 100m yesterday.
I've also been looking at very expensive low-volume items like faction mods. I suppose I should stay away from those for the time being?

Is it possible to make a living from station trading alone?

Have you any numbers to back that up?

While these can pay out big, they generally take quite a lot of time and effort to pull off with any reliability. As a result the isk/hour isn't actually that great.

For the past few months I've been running security missions. I used to think this would be my primary source of income.

Browsing trough my transactions, I found that I've made most of my ISK buying and selling skills, modules, ammunition and ships. Most of it in the same trade hub.

Truth be told. I like crunching numbers and micromanaging trades almost as much as I like blowing stuff up. Is it possible to make a living from station trading alone?

There are two types of trading, you can break it down to
- High volume items
- Low volume items

Low volume items have two big advantages, nearly no 0.01ing and easier to manipulate. They're perfect for medium/long term trading between different trade hubs.
High volume items are for the most part t1, t2 stuff and materials, if you aren't producing t1 and t2 yourself i won't trade with them. Materials on the other hand are easier to trade with, example are Isotopes like clockwork they are manipulated on Friday morning to get a higher sell price for the weekend. This sort of manipulation is wide spread among many high volume items.

I spend 1h per day actively trading with low volume items, that is 7h per week. My weekly profit is between 5b to 7b, so 714m to 1b per hour. You won't get that numbers from the get go, but 200m per hour are easy once you set up shop.

1 billion in a day trading in jita with 2 billion investment if I play the 0.01 isk game for a few hours, but i can comfortable make 200 mill per day updating just a few things once a day on pure lazy mode then that isk is made while i sleep

station trading in jita takes time to learn, I would go with the spreadsheet route and learn what things are trading for at their lowest and highest then work out your prices from that, one tip i will give which is probably important when considering number of orders limit per character. Try to only setup buy orders for items currently being bought at their lowest point in the cycle, and only buy them if they have at least at the minimum (if it is a rare or hardly used item) 5 - 10 units per day total median average volume sold. It is entirely possible to setup a good spreadsheet and pull all the data you need in almost real time and have the data sorted so you can see at a glance what items are worth trading today or next week...

I won't share my exact workflow as i've worked hard to be able to make this much isk per day for very little effort, i typically never break the 3 billion mark since i spend all my isk on funding 2 accounts, toys to fly and wardecs, I always however constantly improve my trading strategy, sometimes those improvements are actually not improvements on my system but destructive. Which is why I want to stress you should make yourself some rules and stick to them, in my early trading days i was constantly changing my mind, setting up like 200 orders and getting frustrated and cancelling them all... There is a lot of competition out there in the trading profession both in eve and in the real world, the only way to win at trading is to rise above the others by raising your own expectations of what you are able to do.

Make your trading rules or system and stick to it and see how it works, then look at it and look to why you lost isk or you made isk, look for ways to avoid the same mistakes, improve your system make new rules and stick to them, soon you be making billions with very little effort. However you can only make more isk if you're willing to put in the effort, because its hard to break the 1 billion mark for a noob trader, then its harder to break the 3 billion mark but that will sustain 2 accounts with plex, 1 main for pvp the other trading in jita, but only if you have a clue.

Ok that was more than one tip but w/e