EVE Search - Blog of a Newbie Trader

All Channels

Market Discussions

Blog of a Newbie Trader - The First Month

» Click here to find additional results for this topic using Google

Monitor this thread via RSS [?]

Pages: [1] 2 3 :: one page
Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 0 post(s)
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.05.30 05:14:00 - [1] What I am Doing: I am a fairly new character to Eve with no trading experience to speak of. I have, however, been reading the market forums for the last few weeks and decided I wanted to give it a shot. My 'main', who is a little over a month old (the Rookie Help channel just stopped popping up each time I log in earlier this week!) is entirely combat focused. I decided the best way to try it out was with a 'trading alt', and so here I go. However, I am not satisfied with just trying it out...I want to make a bit of an experiment out of it...so here are the rules I am following for my experiment: - Only the cash this character can make itself, no transfers from my 'main' and no donations - Only missions run for the first month will be the initial newbie missions, after these I am trade-only - Only using player trades after the newbie missions, no npc - No scams - Full tracking will be done through EMMA - No skills will be trained other than trade, social and learning skills as needed Some of you will note this is very similar to the Bouncer Ricdic experiment (not linked because I don't want to cause a necro of the thread for the umpteenth time), however there are a few differences: 1) I am REALLY a noob 2) I am starting with a trade oriented character 3) I am allowing myself to do the newbie missions, because I think this is more realistic for a typical noob like myself 4) I don't have a particular goal I am shooting for in NAV, however if I decide I like trading and do at all well, I may train corp skills and turn this into an IPO at the end of the experiment 5) I am not limiting myself to Jita Some things are the same: 1) I WILL track my value as a NAV, the same as Ricdic did - so sell orders are valued at market price and buy orders are valued at the amount I have put up to do the purchase (i.e. the cash it would be if I had left it in the wallet) 2) I will be doing this for a one month period...I am starting on May 30th and will end updates on June 30th
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.05.30 05:15:00 - [2] Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/05/2008 05:18:54 Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/05/2008 05:17:56 FAQ Why do we care? You probably don't...I see this as a blog of sorts as I get going, and may be looking for some helpful thoughts or advice along the way. If you don't care, I simply ask that you do not troll, and use a typical Eve phrase I have seen: GTFO How do we know you aren't 'cheating'? Firstly by my word...secondly by 'why the hell would I? Its my own blog/experiment silly!' and thirdly if a trusted third party would like to pop open my wallet with my API key I will send it their way. I will not pay for the service as that would invalidate my experiment, but if somebody else wishes to pay for it that is fine, provided it is somebody I feel is trustworthy in the marketplace. I am also downloading everything into EMMA, so if somebody knows how to get this out and post it somewhere I can do that eventually (i.e. after the 30th) Will you be training skills? I will post the skills I train as I train them along with daily updates, and appreciate any advice on skill training orders. Ha ha you suck, you didn't even make a decent amount in the first week, this is sad to even read!@@! As I said, I am new and frankly this is somewhat of a blog...I will learn as I go and hopefully not fall flat on my face. If I do, I will have learned from the process. I am not looking to break records, but to provide a view of life as a newbie trader, to learn, and to share my experience (because, after all, it would be really boring to just do it without sharing) Oh, and GTFO (more to be added as necessary if questions are raised)
Quinn DelTirith Firman AB 101010 Alliance	Posted - 2008.05.30 05:16:00 - [3] Edited by: Quinn DelTirith on 30/05/2008 05:19:20 My Main This is a posting with my 'main' to validate who I am. At the completion of this effort my 'main' and my 'trading alt' will be the same general age. I have never played Eve before, and am currently in a small capital ship building corp called Firman AB. I do not build or trade anything for that corp, and simply joined it as a newbie looking for people to run missions with. From a skills perspective, my 'main' has almost 50% of all skills in missile launcher operation. He does NOT know a SINGLE trade skill...not even Trade I. Seriously.
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.05.30 05:16:00 - [4] Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/05/2008 05:21:24 My Starting Skills The character for the experiment is a Male Caldari Civire. I linked him to EveMon, and here are his relevant (and barely relevant) skills to start: Trade Broker Relations II Daytrading IV Retail IV Trade V Social Diplomacy V Negotiation III Social IV Spaceship Command Caldari Frigate II Spaceship Command I Learning Analytical Mind II Empathy IV Learning I Starting Stats Charisma: 13.26 Intelligence: 7.14 Perception: 9.18 Memory: 7.14 Willpower: 9.18
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.05.30 05:17:00 - [5] Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/05/2008 05:22:14 Status Summary I will update this post on a semi-regular basis with current NAV and skill status as I go along. Starting (June 30 2008) NAV: 5,000 ISK Training Today: Learning and then Broker Relations - no money for skill books so need to stick to what I have to train Activities: I will do the newbie missions today, and try to find a home for my trading
Xerian Dragonne Lovecraftian Horrors	Posted - 2008.05.30 05:25:00 - [6] I'm a noob myself and have been watching the forums for three weeks or so and am definately interested to see how this goes. Good luck!
Munen Imperial Academy	Posted - 2008.05.30 13:32:00 - [7] Good luck with that. I was inspired by that thread myself to become a trader just for the potential short term cash infusions I can get. Still haven't gotten around to trading myself though so I'll be keeping an eye on this thread. Be mindful of your surroundings.
Shar Tegral	Posted - 2008.05.30 14:40:00 - [8] Originally by: Maestro Del'Tirith Why do we care? Why ask why, just do it. Enough of us will like it regardless of trolling. And, sadly, you can't stop the trolls. You can however feel free to report them. Good Luck. To Shar -verb: 1 - To say what you mean. 2 - To say what it means. 3 - To say something mean.
xDow Fallen Pandas	Posted - 2008.05.30 14:59:00 - [9] Bookmarked for future reading Good luck! - I has a spaceship.
Jacobi Jantrit	Posted - 2008.05.30 15:04:00 - [10] Best of luck with this. I look forward to seeing how you do.
EBANK Ricdic Eve-Tech Savings n Loans	Posted - 2008.05.30 15:22:00 - [11] Awesome, it's great to see all the new budding traders coming of age and trying new things. Best of luck with your project. I guess the only advice I would have is > Not all, but some of this should be taken into consideration * Buy off your own buy orders * Sell off your own sell orders * Don't assume that you need to move all your goods for resale to a single location. * Don't be afraid to set large radius buy orders (10 jumps, region etc) for resale in those areas or have couriers move the jobs to more centralised locations (only really useful for higher profit margin goods) * When starting from the noobie level it's crucial to understand that you need to be making the most profit per dollar. As an example. There's no point spending 58m on an Armageddon you can resell for 60.5m, when you can buy a cruiser at 5m and sell for 6m. The one benefit to the Armageddon is you only have one unit to sell for that profit however when you have limited funds for buy orders and stock you need to get the most bang for your buck. 1 armageddon buy @ 58 , sell @ 60.5 = 2.5m profit 10 cruiser buy @ 50, sell @ 60 = 10m profit for same capital in use. You then need to weigh up the interest in the good. It's pointless buying up 500 units of some item that no-one will buy off you. Use the advanced market tab to help you determine numbers of items traded. The price history tab is also a good way of finding out the rough value of an item, whether it's currently being manipulated, and even being able to roughly determine if there are more buys than sells etc. Inter-regional trading can be dangerous and rewarding at the same time however generally is best done with an alt. I would usually say to try and stay clear of this as much as possible. To start with you should focus more on named goods. You can get some great region wide buys around the 300-800 isk mark and resell them as high as 5-15k. This is how I managed to get Bouncer Ricdic from 5k to 768k after Day 1. It also played a pretty big part in the overall result of the operation. Train Margin Trading. This will be a godsend whilst your character is of short financial stack. Don't use corp wallet for transactions. It adds an extra level of work when having to move all buy orders to personal wallets for resale plus it's buggy as hell where sometimes purchases take days to show up in the deliveries tab. Make sure you value your time in options you choose. Making 2m profit by moving a few items 20 jumps won't really be considered that worthwhile if you could have sat in station and updated your orders during that time. Having said that, if you find you can make 2m profit on items purchased whilst your NAV is under the 5-10m mark then it's probably a good idea to do that. Watch the T2 market. Sometimes you can have people (usually people getting rid of stuff they don't use anymore) selling off their stuff to the highest buy orders. Market traders don't have too much of a hold on this section of the industry. As an example with something else I was doing I found I could have a buy order up on Viator's (or might have been Occator) at 60m and resale at 80m. I was easily the highest buy order. A lot can be said for the other goods on the market so don't think that only T1 and Named are best. Having said that, it does take longer for buy orders on T2 gear to fill compared to named and t1. Hope this helps. I have been writing a guide that includes all this kind of thing in detail for months now but it just keeps getting longer so I don't know when it will be released. I should get some sort of royalties from all these budding blog traders
Tanmoe	Posted - 2008.05.30 16:35:00 - [12] Quote: 2) I will be doing this for a one month period...I am starting on May 30th and will end updates on June 30th For what it's worth, I did try EvE as a trader as well. I was not playing much but at the end of the first month I had still no real idea how it all worked... So maybe running your experiment for longer could be good .... I certainly would not give up after 1 month if you don't get the results you're hoping for. That said, Best of luck and Enjoy the ride :)
Kazzac Elentria	Posted - 2008.05.30 16:45:00 - [13] Originally by: EBANK Ricdic Watch the T2 market. Sometimes you can have people (usually people getting rid of stuff they don't use anymore) selling off their stuff to the highest buy orders. Market traders don't have too much of a hold on this section of the industry. As an example with something else I was doing I found I could have a buy order up on Viator's (or might have been Occator) at 60m and resale at 80m. I was easily the highest buy order. A lot can be said for the other goods on the market so don't think that only T1 and Named are best. Having said that, it does take longer for buy orders on T2 gear to fill compared to named and t1. Keep in mind if you track the average price of T2 goods and which stations they are being sold at.. ALONG with tracking T2 component prices. You can get a good feeling of who is producing what and if it's from invention or a BPO. You can then use this to wrangle control from the industrialists and put them to work for you, even if they don't know it.
Chomin H'ak The Trivenerate	Posted - 2008.05.30 18:01:00 - [14] I'll add to Ricdic's wisdom: Pay real close attention to the volume of sales (one item that nets you a profit of eleventymillions that only sells once a year is worthless compared to the one that makes you hundreds/thousands per minute) And that's all I'll say... I may edit this out later... Why am I helping again?
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.05.30 18:27:00 - [15] Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/05/2008 18:27:45 Edited by: Maestro Del''Tirith on 30/05/2008 18:27:21 Thanks a bunch for the advice folks! Reading through the responses, I have some better ideas...nothing that makes me want to pull my buy orders off the market right now, but definitely something I'll consider as I make new ones. I am about done for the day, and will post the final result in the status report. In general, today I did some of the newbie quest - didn't do the last part because it requires that I buy a skill book and train a skill that is outside of the list I said I would train. However working up to that point I would say net me at least 300k ISK...hard to be sure as not everything has sold from it yet. I then moved around a bit, hit up some trading hubs, and did some trading. Check above for the results so far.
Maestro DelTirith	Posted - 2008.05.30 18:48:00 - [16] Looking for advice on how I am calculating NAV if anybody has some contrary thoughts...in the end I imagine it is irrelevant, so long as it is consistent, however I'd like to make sure I am reading things right (being a newb leads to some doubts :) ) Right now I am taking my Wallet actual ISK and calling that cash Then I go to Market, click on Orders, and down at the bottom is an escrow amount...I call that escrow Then i go to my sell orders and my items sitting in Assets, and for each I pull up the highest regional Buy order (NOT sell order...i.e. if I had to liquidate right now, I could sell it to a buy order for that amount) and call that the value. It is obviously less than what I plan to sell it for, but I figure it makes sense to ensure I'm not inflating based on speculation. Appreciate any thoughts on this.
Hexxx	Posted - 2008.05.31 01:03:00 - [17] I did a 2 hour workshop on trade, it was recorded. You can find it: http://bannedbrothers.net/downloads/HEXXX.rar Just open it up with a free trial version of WinRAR. I've been told that people find it useful. Director \| www.eve-bank.net
Starlight Horizons Starlight Horizons Corporation New Eden Research	Posted - 2008.05.31 04:10:00 - [18] Originally by: Maestro DelTirith Looking for advice on how I am calculating NAV if anybody has some contrary thoughts...in the end I imagine it is irrelevant, so long as it is consistent, however I'd like to make sure I am reading things right (being a newb leads to some doubts :) ) Right now I am taking my Wallet actual ISK and calling that cash Then I go to Market, click on Orders, and down at the bottom is an escrow amount...I call that escrow Then i go to my sell orders and my items sitting in Assets, and for each I pull up the highest regional Buy order (NOT sell order...i.e. if I had to liquidate right now, I could sell it to a buy order for that amount) and call that the value. It is obviously less than what I plan to sell it for, but I figure it makes sense to ensure I'm not inflating based on speculation. Appreciate any thoughts on this. Well it really depends on how anal you are when determining the value of your inventory. Cash and escrow are easy, its those items you are selling that are tricky. I have built a nice spreadsheet that I input the highest buy order of each mineral and then I have it linked to each item to reflect what its mineral value is worth. I created the spreadsheet by actually going through each item I was trading and clicking on the refine button and typing in the mineral values. I have a corp standing of 7.00 so I get 100% refine, no lost minerals due to tax or lack of skills. This gives me an instant accounting to the liquid value of my inventory which is what I report as NAV for my IPO STR-H. From my good old accounting 101 college course book NAV is very simple: Your Assets - Liabilities = Owner's Equity. The isk in your wallet is an Asset, along with all of your inventory and Escrow. Your add up broker fees and taxes as Liabilities. Your initial investment into your trading career is your owner's equity. The equation always has to be equal, which means that you can move the columns around, ie Assets = Liabilities + Owner's Equity or Assets - Liabilities = Owner Equity as long as you get the same number each time. Example You start with 500,000 isk as your initial investment so that is your Owner's Equity. Your NAV is 500,000 and your equation reads as such: Assets - Cash 500,000 Liabilities - 0 Owner's Equity - 500,000 Now, you put up a buy order for 50 Asymmetric Energy Succor I at 2,000 isk p/u. Assets - Cash 399,219.42 / Escrow 100,000 Liabilities - Broker's Fee 780.58 Owner's Equity - 499,219.42 Right now you are technically down 780.58 isk in broker's fee as you haven't bought or sold anything but you have expanded resources to gain the ability to purchase inventory. Now, you being a smart trader know that the Asymmetric Energy Succor I has a mineral value of 4,237.09 isk with your refine, well actually my refine. With every Succor you buy via your buy order your equation changes but you know you are building up potential profits. It is up to you to figure out the turn-over rate of which items you sell, when to refine and sell the minerals, when to refine and build T1 modules that will net you a gain over the mineral value etc...Consider this a free tip, I have moved on to bigger and better items, I no longer purchase items with a mineral value of less than 50k, unless the market is to easy to scoop up and score cheap minerals. Keep good notes, focus on a good 5 to 10 items at first. Some other keys are to know what types of ships people are flying in your region, what types of NPC's are they fighting, how are they fitting their ships, which loot is common drops, where will ammo sell quickly, cap boosters and drones etc...You might need to read up on the ships forum to find out what people fit, or sit outside a busy station and just watch people dock and un dock. Intelligence is your friend. If you have any other questions, post them or evemail me.
Demtalin le'Mercennaire The Arrow Project Morsus Mihi	Posted - 2008.05.31 14:55:00 - [19] I'll be watching this thread with interest, good luck. Also, there are alot of good tips in this thread, a few of them I'd figured out for myself, or picked up in other places, but I got some new ones from here. Thanks guys. -------- Billy Jean is not my lover
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.05.31 16:28:00 - [20] Thanks a bunch for all the activity in the thread...there are definitely some very good tips here! I'm about a quarter of the way through listening the the audio file :) I have definitely made some mistakes over the past day...you'll notice my 'Assets' column is very large...I feel that some items just aren't selling as quickly as I thought. I will be doing some slight adjustments to market orders before I call it a day, but as a whole I think I haven't done 'terrible'. Love the advice on looking for high margin items...I have been doing my best to do so...the difficult part for any new fellow (or anybody I guess) is finding good margin AND high enough volume. I believe I have gotten a lot better at this today, but am still weighed down from yesterday's blunders. Other piece I would say is that I have spent a lot of time flying around...I don't have the skills to put things up for sale from a distance, so my region buy orders become quite painful. I have capitalized on the fact that I have a good amount of time to devote to this yesterday and today, but I will need to restructure to focus on doing orders closer in starting Monday...I won't be able to get the margins I am now, but saving the time will probably be worth it...hopefully I'll be able to acquire some much needed skills books and do some trading training in the next week Updated my end of day NAV...I am still using my buy order method, as I think the mineral-based method is good but I don't have the appropriate data together to handle it. Would love to hear some feedback on how well I am doing. I will share some more details on the early efforts in a while when it won't affect my trading anymore, in the hopes that other new traders don't repeat my same mistakes.
EBANK Ricdic Eve-Tech Savings n Loans	Posted - 2008.05.31 17:44:00 - [21] 4m in 2 days. Quite impressive, you are pwning my one so far
Kazzac Elentria	Posted - 2008.05.31 18:00:00 - [22] Originally by: EBANK Ricdic 4m in 2 days. Quite impressive, you are pwning my one so far Agreed, the true test will be once he hits the 100m mark and has to start deciding which items to scale up volume on an existing item(s), or moving into a station per station style of trading.
Petyr Baelich Taggart Transdimensional Virtue of Selfishness	Posted - 2008.05.31 21:16:00 - [23] Originally by: EBANK Ricdic 4m in 2 days. Quite impressive, you are pwning my one so far He did the tutorial missions, if I recall your experiment started out with pure trade, 5,000 isk and a lump of trit. Still... the fact that he did not bankrupt himself with his first day of trading is impressive enough by itself, let alone showing a profit. :)
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.06.01 03:58:00 - [24] Originally by: EBANK Ricdic 4m in 2 days. Quite impressive, you are pwning my one so far I have to agree with the other poster's comments...doing the newbie missions gave me a huge leg up. I don't think my 500k -> 1.7 mil in the first day even comes close to comparing to your 5k -> 700k+ on your first day. That said, it isn't a competition really, I am more than aware that I'm a newb :) I'm fairly happy with my results thus far, however I do think I've made some mistakes in the first two days...I truly believe I could have done a lot better. I'll elaborate more in a few days or so.
EBANK Ricdic Eve-Tech Savings n Loans	Posted - 2008.06.01 04:28:00 - [25] Originally by: Petyr Baelich He did the tutorial missions, if I recall your experiment started out with pure trade, 5,000 isk and a lump of trit. Still... the fact that he did not bankrupt himself with his first day of trading is impressive enough by itself, let alone showing a profit. :) My char wasn't at all specialised in trade so he would have had a benefit there. However he had minimal market knowledge so it's definetly an impressive result. I didn't realise the noobie tutorials netted that much isk tbh.
Demtalin le'Mercennaire The Arrow Project Morsus Mihi	Posted - 2008.06.01 06:57:00 - [26] As a newb trader your profit margins are far better than mine. Good job on spotting those items making you 200% profit etc. I made a newb trade alt a while ago, and it took me 10 days to turn 50mil into 100mil (in rens), I make more in ratting lol. I started using him again recentally, hopefully I might make a bit more by following the tips which I didn't know before. -------- Billy Jean is not my lover
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.06.01 10:22:00 - [27] Originally by: EBANK Ricdic However he had minimal market knowledge so it's definetly an impressive result. I wanted to comment on this a bit. The one thing I would most recommend to a newbie trader is reading these forums. By looking through Ricdic's thread about starting out, and then various other posts and whatnot, I believe I stepped in with more market knowledge than some people have after trading for a month themselves without reading up. The harder lesson I am learning is velocity...it reminds me of something I read that Michael Dell said back when he was building Dell into the #1 in their industry. He said the key to their success was velocity...not having inventory on hand. Inventory on hand is inventory not doing anything for you...I think this applies to cash in the wallet as well as sale orders that are up...velocity is very important. So is margin, no doubt...but frankly I feel like the biggest mistakes I have made so far was to buy up some things that I then couldn't sell...because I didn't take the time to flip over to the history tab and click on 'table' to take a gander at the volume #s.
Kasigi Dark Knights of Deneb Against ALL Authorities	Posted - 2008.06.01 11:33:00 - [28] Originally by: Maestro Del'Tirith That is totally skewed by the 14,000% margin I am getting on one item I am trading in as heavily as I can :) Don't become too reliant on it
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.06.01 19:13:00 - [29] Originally by: Kasigi Don't become too reliant on it Always good advice :) Well, I'm winding up my third day and I'd say I am somewhat happy with the results. Since I mostly trade during the slow time, I won't know for sure how well certain bets are going to pay off until tomorrow, but as a whole I think I've made some good headway. I'll post up the nav in a bit and give you all something to ridicule ;)
Maestro Del'Tirith	Posted - 2008.06.02 05:04:00 - [30] Slow Days I think the next couple days will be slow days, and as such this is probably my last update for a bit. Work is always extremely busy for me on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I'll be focusing on that. In the meantime, I think I finally have enough to purchase some much needed skill books, so will be spending what little time I have doing order updates on occasion to keep the money flowing and training up skills. Given that money is going out the door, and I won't be doing a lot of turnover, I expect my NAV to stay pretty much stable or even go down a little over the next two days...I'll pick back up on Wednesday though and see if I can turn this 20 mil into 100 ;)

Pages: [1] 2 3 :: one page
First page \| Previous page \| Next page \| Last page

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CCP hf. has granted permission to EVE-Search.com to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, EVE-Search.com. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.