Supply and Demand in Nullsec

In Eve, if you can not find what you want at a price that you are willing to pay for it, buy 3 of them at a trade hub.  Use 1 and put the other 2 on market for other people to buy, at the price you think it should be sold for.

When I first started Eve, I was very intrigued as to how to run a market in isolated space.  I have run a PI buying program in wormholes for a long time, and have more recently been seeding a nullsec outpost.


Recently I received an interesting juxtaposition of emails in the nullsec hub that I am seeding.

Email #1

SOV is changing and shit may hit the fan, If you got stuff in <nullsec> you don't want lost get it out now while you can. If you plan on not being around you may want to send you stuff to <highsec> while you can. Hope no one has to firesale there eve life.

Email #2
Attention
Someone is playing games in <nullsec> market and has bought up and relisted cruiser hulls to double their value.
If you need ships, there are builders that would love the business, don't get caught paying rediculous prices. Let them rot on contracts so that the numbskull who relisted them loses money.
Thank you, have a profitable day!

Details of systems have been obscured and who sent these emails are not included.  Spelling error are (for once) not mine.  For those that really want to know where I am in game, it's not hard to find out.

I had just manufactured several cruiser hulls and listed them on the market ... for double Jita price.

My market strategy is OK, but not brilliant:

• Find a T1 item not on market.
• Find a blueprint for that item (a while ago I went on an aimless BPO research spree that I am now tapping into, and supplementing with imported BP's)
• Buy raw mats locally
• Build it
• Sell it

Sometimes, it is:

• Find an item that can't be made locally (especially skillbooks)
• Import it
• Sell it

I charge double Jita prices on T1 cruiser hulls, and charge even more on cheaper stuff.

I use long sell orders, and revisit them very rarely, on average every 6 weeks.

When I am undercut, I pull the items from the market and put them into storage, and find something else to sell.  I am also training for more trade slots.  Far too often, then undercutter sells one batch, realizes it's work and then gives up.  I then put my items back onto the market.

Some items move slowly.  Some move quickly and I am not good enough at keeping on top of these.  Some don't move at all and these are pulled from the market.

I have not 'flipped' anything in null.  The closest I come is putting up buy orders on PI and then reselling it, and even that is currently rare.   I don't have the spare trade slots.

I currently have 600 trade slots in null.  Small fry for some of the bigger industrialist bloggers, but far exceeds most of the local players.  Many of the better locals have 30 trade slots, and I encourage them to fill every one of them.

My strategy means that if I were not there, then no one would be selling those items.

If I wanted to make stuff for Jita prices, I would do so in highsec, with the risk that comes from being a station builder in highsec.  Instead, I am currently trading in null, and add an 'at risk' component to the pricing.  At the moment, all sales are re-invested into new raw materials or items.  One day they will be taken as income.

I welcome people undercutting me.  Buyers on the market use others undercutting as their trump card to 'force' me to lower prices, and find my attitude on this confronting.  Sellers find it confronting because I should instead be defending 'my turf'. 

Any seller, listing anything adds to the market.  I have 600 market orders.  There are thousands of items just in ships and their various fittings.  Then there are just as many components in various stages of refining in order to make these ships and fittings. 

For every item currently on sale in my nullsec patch, there are at least 2 other worthy items not being sold.  I choose selling a new item that no one is covering over fighting over an existing one.

Buyers want to buy stuff.  If there is no one selling it, they cant. My experience is that buyers want to buy complete fits.  If they have to go to 5 different systems, they will often give up and wait until a jump freighter run, or simply go without. My experience is that if they can fit in one spot they will do so.  If they come for a shopping trip, they also buy for their future.

There are some that think that Jita + 200% is too low.  http://evenews24.com/2015/05/19/confessions-of-a-trader-you-are-blue-to-us-right/ makes for an interesting read.

So, if you happen to find yourself in a nullsec region, and you can not find what you want, at a price you want to pay for it, then import or build it, and put spares on the market.

Tweak to PI spreadsheet

I have made a small tweak to my PI spreadsheets.

My PI spreadsheet prices have historically been based on average sell prices across 4 trade hubs (Amarr, Jita, Dodixie, Hek)

For me being wormhole based, Amarr is mildly preferable to Jita (and yes that even includes my stocking of nullsec) as Amarr is well overrepresented as the closest wormhole route, but any of them may be closest.

What I (and commenters) have noticed recently is that sometimes the average of 4 hubs is screwy because (generally Hek) has one or two really bad prices.

So now, I am using a slightly more complicated 'sell' price which is best sell of Hek or Rens and then averaging 'Minmatar', Amarr, Jita, Dodixie.

For those who have not seen the spreadsheet before, it's master is at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lXM8PqU0Tn4EJJ2xRuI7uo55IrZ7MKWJidK9T_bA9L4/edit?usp=sharing

As google docs is no longer reliably playing with eve central nicely, I also have a PDF version linked manually from  http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/p/pi-spreadsheet-snapshots.html (linked at the top of this blog). The most recent PDF version is https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1HsU_rOxWl4VHI3YkVjUFJVazA/view?usp=sharing


PS.  My last post a fortnight ago was me saying I was rebuilding my Eve setup.  This turned into something more involved and ended up being a complete PC re-install from operating system up.

Re-install of Eve

As you might gather from the title, I had issues ... with my Eve install.

I run multiple concurrent sessions of eve, described in more detail in http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/running-multiple-eve-launchers-my.html

Compared to many of you, I also have a poor internet connection, so I also run with downloading with all data.

The first symptom was the Eve launcher warning me that I had problems with the cache of the skins file.

The second symptom was that after that Eve would not start.  The task manager (I run windows 8) showed there was something running, but nothing would happen.  And I could not even get the above error message.

I tried using the task manager to crash Eve to restart.
I tried rebooting my computer ( always try this ).
I tried evefile.exe
I tried different install folders

All of these failed.  Sigh.

Ok delete the Program Files (x86)\CCP folder and reinstall.  Still failed .... Grr.

Delete the local cache folder ... and restart ... Nope

Delete %localappdata%\CCP\EVE and restart ... Success.  I can log in.

Download on demand makes the initial Eve experience much faster. 

I am still not sure about everything.  I tried to bring up a PI management window and can now have a largely unusable session with a black screen, apart from what is behind the overview window.  I can't bring up the options window (for a safe logoff).

I  logged a Help desk ticket (being able to paste but not write makes this frustrating but *shrug*, whenever you are lodging help desk tickets, it doesn't take much.

But ... for those who sent me emails the last couple of days, this is why I have been slow to respond