Brain Dead Order Entry System Strikes Again

Eves's brain dead order entry system burned me again today.

I really wish CCP would get off their butts and fix this retarded, unrealistic, ass backwards system.

CCP likes to talk about how they take such a hard line stance against bots and other forms of cheating. Yet they continue to bury their heads in the sand and ignore a poorly thought out unrealistic mechanic that only benefits bots (bots don't make typos so it never hurts them) and hurts honest players who don't cheat.

It'd be so easy to fix too.

Assuming marginally competent programmers it should be a simple matter of changing a couple simple conditional logic statements to do the opposite of what they do now. It shouldn't take anything much more complicated than changing a conditional operator or moving some variables around in a couple places (one for buy orders, another for sell orders). If it takes much more than that then not only is the code a mess but the programmers who wrote it in the first place had to be incompetent.

Public Courier Contracts

In the last week I've expanded to 6 new regions which means I'm buying a lot more stuff and it's spread out over a much larger area. Since I want to spend less time flying around picking stuff up, not more, I had to try something different to cut the time down.

In the past I rarely used public courier contracts but for the last week I've been using them a lot more, especially in the larger regions and in or near low sec PvP areas.

I'll fly around gathering up buys in a small area and dropping them off in 500 mil+ lots somewhere convenient. Then I courier the whole lot to my main base of operations in the region and continue doing pickups without having to fly back to base all the time.

I make long trips to and from base far less frequently and I can do all the long trips on autopilot without fretting since I'm always flying them empty now.

Any station that has stuff on it worth about 500 mil or more I just courier to my base in the first place without even leaving base.

Anything way out in the middle of nowhere 15 or 20 jumps away from base and far from any other pickups I'll just courier to the closest station I get a lot of stuff at. Assuming doing so is profitable, otherwise I'll just post it for sale right where it is.

For items acquired in low sec I've started using public courier contracts even if it's only a jump or two away. That's been working great too, especially in PvP areas and near gate-camps.

Public courier contracts have been working out a lot better than I expected so far, in all ways. I really didn't think there'd be many takers on public contracts paying a few million (300-500 k per jump) with 500+ mil collateral but it's been working great for me so far. I didn't think there'd be many takers on public contracts in close proximity to a major gate-camp either but it looks like I was wrong on both counts.

I set realistic collateral values 10-20% higher than I expect to sell the items for (usually that's quite a lot more than I paid for it). Even if someone does steal a load (hasn't happened yet) all he'll really be doing is providing me with a quick turnover at a better than expected profit.

So far all my public courier contracts have been delivered within 24 hours. AFAIC that's fantastic, it's as good as or better than RFF service between hubs.

Newbie Business Plan - Trading Skill Books

The 10 million and under skill book market segment has been very good to me. I've made billions off it but I just pulled out (reluctantly) because it's the low end of my business now and my business has grown so much it became impossible to continue working this segment properly.

Over the last 3 days I've pulled out of the 10 million and under (school price) skill book market in Lonetrek region and 4 of the 5 main hubs (I'll be pulling out of the 5th soon too). Already buy prices are plummeting and sell prices skyrocketing.

Conditions are now perfect for new traders to set up in this market and make a lot of ISK.

In particular, right now would be a great time to set up in Lonetrek buying skillbooks under 10 million regionally. Full regional, 5, 10 or 20 jump buy orders will all work fine, just remember the larger your buying range the more work you'll have flying around picking them up.

Start out buying one or two of each and update prices at least once a day. As your capital builds up slowly increase your order sizes. Sell what you can on Sobeseki, Torrinos, Nonni or one of the many smaller hubs in the region and unload overstock on Jita (preferably on another alt there).

If you're short on ISK start out with just the books going for 5 million or less.

If you're a true newbie and really short on ISK, work the cheapest skill books first (under 1 million at schools) until you can move into the 1-10 mil market. High Speed Maneuvering (350k at schools) was one of my best items in my first weeks. I bought stacks of them for 75-150k and resold them for 350k+.

Best named modules (meta 4 for the most part) are great starter items for newbies too. Item's like Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field, Local Hull Conversion Nanofibers and Eutectic Capictor Rechargers. You can buy huge stacks of them cheaply in Lonetrek and move them to Jita for nice profits.

If you have plenty of ISK but are short on orders start out with books going for 5-10 million instead.

If you have plenty of both ISK and orders, start out using buy orders for 5, 10, 20 or more of each book. Obviously bigger orders for the cheaper books and smaller orders for the more expensive ones.

One of the best things about the skill book market is the vast majority of books are sold by schools which sets a soft cap on prices and prevents rich players from manipulating prices too much. Nobody can simply buy them all out and jack prices sky high. Even when margins are extremely tight, as long as you're paying less than school price and selling for more, you're golden.

You can make billions every month off this business alone. I did. The only drawback is it's fairly time intensive. It's great at first but the bigger you get the more time it takes.

Any book with the word "Specialization" in it trades well, "subsystems" and science books are pretty decent too. Some books do sell better than others and some sell a lot faster on a main hub than they will in Lonetrek but all books in the 1-10 million ISK range are good to trade. Weapon books (like those "specialization" books) and spaceship command books sell well just about anywhere.

The same strategy works in any empire region, I suggest Lonetrek because IMO it's the best place for a regional skill book business like this. There are plenty of customers around but the business is spread out on multiple secondary and small hubs all over the region, meaning no-lifers and bots are less of a problem than they are on the main hubs.

I almost forgot. Do not use a big, slow industrial ship for this type of business. The items aren't bulky, all you really need is a small fast T1 frigate. Fit it for speed and agility (nanofibers) and use Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer rigs if you can. Mid slots you can either tank or use cap rechargers (very useful for low skills alts having trouble making warps all in one shot).

Even better if you can use a Covert Ops frigate or best of all a Blockade Runner, either of which makes low/null pickups a whole lot safer.

If you're in an NPC corp (no wardecs) and aren't a criminal you can autopilot most of the time as long as you realize you will get ganked eventually and lose a load. Be careful about using autopilot in 0.5 systems though, especially Litiura (assuming you're in Lonetrek) and never use autopilot in low or null.

Don't even bother passing through EC-P8R (null sec) or Aunenen (low sec), it can be done but it's just not worth the trouble. If you buy something in or behind those major gate camps it's a whole lot simpler to just put it up for resale at a good price (for the buyer) right where it is.

Lonetrek really is a great place to do business! More on that later.

Low Volume Buying vs Bulk Buying

I usually advocate buying in bulk and making big total profits over big profits per item. That's what usually works best for me. Consistent, steady, reliable profits over big, flashy numbers that don't usually add up to as much in total.

But sometimes you have to consider the low volume, high margin side of the equation too.

Take for example a mod or implant that's currently selling for 150 million.

Which is better?

1. Buying 10 at 140 million each and making roughly 8 million on each for 80 milliion total profit.
2. Buying just 1 for 75 million and making roughly 73 million on it.

If you still aren't sure consider this. While you do make 7 million more in total buying 10 you need 1.4 billion to buy them in the first place. All that ISK is tied up unavailable to use to purchase anything else until you both sell the items and post a new purchase order.

On the other hand buying just one cheaply only ties up 75 million, makes nearly as much in total AND leaves the other 1325 million available to purchase other things with.

The morale of the story is while buying and selling in bulk is what I normally advocate, there certainly are situations where you're better off working with low volume instead. Work with rules of thumb, not hard, inflexible rules and know when to change things up to take advantage of current conditions.

Of course the trick is managing to buy 1 for 75 million when everyone else is paying 140 million. That's mostly about location and transport and a little bit about product selection.

New Business Plan

It took some experimentation (a lot of trial and error) but my routines, methods, quickbar lists and prices have been slowly tweaked and polished to work efficiently in smaller, less populated regions away from the main hubs too.

Naturally I started thinking about expanding to other regions further out from the heart of empire space.

After perusing Ombey's maps late one night very early one morning and taking a good look at travel routes, choke-points, hi to low/null gates, regional gates and such I found several locations that seem to have a lot of potential as spots for expansion.

Initially I was planning on starting another 3 month expansion plan for another 6 new trade alts. The first expansion is practically finished now so I was going to keep the accounts active and train up another 6 new trade alts to expand into new regions with.

I had it all planned out, I even started dual training new alts on 2 of the accounts.

Then I started thinking about the time, effort and amount of capital it would take to get 6 more new alts up to speed with enough capital to operate with. It was going to be a long, slow, painful process.

Then there's the fact that the 6 alts from the first expansion really aren't making much more than enough to pay their account PLEX costs. But they are well capitalized and just about finished training. They could move into new regions and be big players in the local markets immediately.

I really didn't want to move the alts because they're covering the lucrative upper low end to lower mid range bulk skill book market (books going for 1-10 million ISK). On the other hand it does take an awful lot of time and effort to work that market segment properly so maybe I'd be better off just dropping the 10 million and under skill books and moving the alts to new regions.

I really hate thinking about how buy prices will plummet and sell prices skyrocket within days of my leaving that market (that's happened every single one of the many times I started to leave the market in the past).

Another thing that made me hesitate to move any traders from the first wave of expansion is that they're named for the stations they trade out of. That made it really easy to remember which trader was where. Things could get a little confusing with the trader named for Hek moving to Teonusude in Molden Heath... Or worse yet somewhere not even in Minmatar space.

Decisions... Decisions...

In the end I decided to keep training the 2 new alts at least until dual training runs out in a month (no choice really about that) and move 1 or 2 of the first expansion alts to new areas immediately. Hek moved to Teonusude last night and I'll probably move another to Khanid within a few days.

6 Regions

I'll be expanding into 6 new regions:

Derelik region on Jarizza Tanoo

Khanid region on Agil

The Citadel region on Motsu

Placid region on Stacmon (or maybe Orvolle)

Khador region on Dresi

Molden Heath region on Teonusude

A seventh possibility is in Solitude on Octannneve  but for now I'll just keep it in mind as a backup location in case one of the other locations doesn't work out very well.

These will be primary traders each covering a different region. They'll mostly handle mods, implants, the more expensive skill books, maybe some ship hulls and a few other things. Mainly items going for at least 20 million ISK. They all have 305 orders and plenty of cash to go into full operation immediately.

It's funny how Teonusude went from being an afterthought (I didn't plan on moving there at first) to being the first of the 6 regions I moved to. The thing is the more research I did and the more I thought about it, the more sense moving there made. In the end the facts that the Hek trader was the worst performing of the characters I could potentially move and that Teon is only 4 jumps from Hek sealed the deal. Teon jumped from barely making the list all the way to the top of the list.

I also moved another trader from Couster to Renyn a couple days ago, same region, only 2 jumps away, but better positioned to catch through traffic. Oursulaert you say? No thanks, I had an alt there once and hated it there. Post just about anything there and the Ours bots will undercut you by 0.01 ISK within seconds.

The Skill Plan

Here's the skill plan the 2 new traders I'd already started will follow

Cybernetics I

Plug in +3 Charisma, Memory, Willpower and Intelligence implants

Trade I
Social I
Contracting I

Trade II - IV
Retail I - IV
Broker Relations I - IV
Accounting I - IV
Margin Trading I - V

Contracting II - III
Daytrading I - IV

Marketing I - IV
Retail V
Wholesale I - IV

Accounting V
Wholesale V
Tycoon I - IV

Broker Relations V
Tycoon V
Trade V
Daytrading V
Marketing V
Contracting IV

The only difference between this skill plan and the skill plan used in Part 1 is this time I'll only be training Cybernetics I and using +3 implants rather than +4.

As usual I'll be mixing in a few days worth of flight skills so they can fly a frigate fit with nanos, cap rechargers and velocity optimizers decently.

DOH!

I don't need to say a thing, the picture says it all.

Torpedo Launchers For Dummies

Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers are for dummies!

Don't believe it? It's true, here's why:

Recent Jita prices:

Dread Guristas: 27 million
Caldari Navy: 88 million

Jita prices a few months ago:

Dread Guristas: 35 million
Caldari Navy: 115 million

Triple the price

Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers are usually nearly always about 3 times the price of Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers. There's always plenty of both in stock on all the major hubs and many of the secondary hubs too.

Other than the name they are identical

Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers have the exact same attributes, fitting requirements and prerequisites as Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers. In other words, besides the name they are identical. The Caldari version is usually priced in the 75-100 million ISK range, the Guristas version is usually well under 40 million.

I'm amazed prices stay so high for either since there really isn't very much demand for faction torpedo launchers in the first place. They're way too expensive for most players to consider using on ~20 million ISK glass cannons (Stealth Bombers) and that has to be where the vast majority of Torpedo Launchers get used.

To clarify, I meant torpedo launchers in general (not faction torps in particular) are mostly used on bombers. The point being with Stealth Bombers not using faction torps, I believe there isn't much demand for faction torps, they're over supplied and over priced.

Mind you the funny part is when they do sell they often sell in threes which implies buying for a bomber. There must be more dummies than I think, either that or more of those oversized 10MN AB faction fit bombers running around than I thought.

Something to think about

I have a hunch most sales of faction torpedo launchers are traders flipping them back and forth amongst themselves. The old "It's purple, it's gotta be worth more!" thinking.

I've bought them cheaply many times and though it usually took a while, eventually resold them for hefty profits. Sometimes the buyer sells them back to me for much less a few weeks or months later. That's happened at least a few times though I don't think it's ever been the same guy twice.

Someone must be getting burned on them and it isn't me.

TLDR:

Don't be a dummy, if you must have faction torpedo launchers on your stealth bomber just buy Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers and save yourself an easy 150-200 mil ISK.

Three Month Expansion Plan - Part 1

I started a 3 month business expansion training plan a few months back. It's almost finished now and I meant to post about it sooner but somehow I never got around to finishing the post until now.

The original plan was to make 6 new accounts and train up 6 or 7 new characters for 3 months (closer to 4 months actually, but it'd only take 3 PLEX), then transfer most of characters to consolidate accounts and reduce monthly PLEX costs thereafter.

3 Plex = 90 days + 21 day trial = 111 days, learning the full training plan takes about 110 days (with +4 implants and Charisma 30, Memory 24 remap).

I recently (like last night) changed my mind and decided to keep all the accounts active. I'm going to start another 3 month expansion plan with 6 more new traders instead. Look for another post about that soon.

All characters at the very least learned Margin Trading V, Retail V and had started learning Wholesale before beginning to do any trading.

5 Secondary Traders

Four characters are on the hubs in Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek and another is in Lonetrek region. These five are secondary traders dealing in lower value items only (mostly skill-books and a handful of mods I use myself). Initially they started trading 63 different skillbooks worth 1-5 million ISK each. This allowed the primary traders in the same places to drop those items and freed up around 100 orders (both buy and sell) on each trader to use for other more expensive items.

Later, after the 5 secondary traders all had at least Tycoon IV (for 269 orders), they took over skill books worth between 5 and 10 million ISK too and freed up even more orders for the primary traders.

The 5 secondary traders generate almost passive income (more passive than so-called passive income from PI), rarely updating orders more than once a week, if even that often. So far they aren't generating a whole lot but it's still more than enough to pay the PLEX costs for the accounts.

Eventually I'll probably drop skill books under 10 or 20 million altogether and have the secondary traders handle implants, ships and ammo or something like that instead.

2 Primary Traders

The other 2 traders went to secondary hubs on Ichoriya and Clellinon. One was the 6th new trader on a new account, the other was my "spare" trader on Jita which I dual trained and sent to Clellinon. The Clellinon trader moved to Alentene yesterday, only a few jumps away in the same region but a little better positioned to catch through traffic.

These two didn't start trading until they had Margin Trading V, Accounting V and 129 (Ichoriya) or 269 (Clellinon Alentene) orders. They don't do much with skill books worth under 20 million, mostly handling mods, implants and the more expensive skill books like my primary traders in other places.

The Skill Plan

Here's the skill plan they're all following

Cybernetics I

Plug in +3 Intelligence, Memory implants

Trade I
Social I
Contracting I
Cybernetics III- IV

plug in +4 Charisma, Willpower, Memory implants

Trade II - IV
Retail I - IV
Broker Relations I - IV
Accounting I - IV
Margin Trading I - V

Contracting II - III
Daytrading I - IV

Marketing I - IV
Retail V
Wholesale I - IV

Accounting V
Wholesale V
Tycoon I - IV

Broker Relations V
Tycoon V
Trade V
Daytrading V
Marketing V
Contracting IV

They're all nearly finished now, currently learning either Marketing V or Tycoon V. They've also picked up a few days worth of basic navigation, capacitor and fitting skills.

Margin Trading

IMO, the most important trade skill for serious traders is Margin Trading, that's why it's the first skill my traders train to V now. I used to train Retail V and Wholesale IV before Margin Trading V when I was training my first few traders.

Margin Trading is simply amazing for buyers, it allows you to leverage your ISK to place more and bigger buy orders, enabling you to buy a lot more stuff.

It may seem counter-intuitive but I believe it's even more important for new players short on cash than it is for alts of established players who already have plenty of cash. If you have 70 mil ISK it's very well worth spending 35 mil on Margin Trading. It doesn't take very long at all to get Margin Trading high enough to more than double your buying power, so spending half (or even a bit more) of your cash to get the skill is definitely worthwhile.

Of course if you never use buy orders you don't need Margin Trading at all. But if you use buy orders much, it's huge! Train it to V ASAP!

Training Another Trade Alt

I sent my "spare" Jita trader off to reopen shop in Clellinon with a different trading strategy a while back. That's working out extremely well especially during the recent Fountain war. Just imagine my surprise when several fairly pricey stacks of faction mods (with 10-20 mods/stack) all sold within hours of posting. =)

Then I decided I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I missed my "spare" trader on Jita and wanted him back so I started training yet another new character to add to my growing army of trade alts.

I made a new character on the main's account and sent him 600 million, enough to buy a PLEX, a bunch of skill-books, a clone, a couple implants, and still have some left over.

I used the PLEX to activate dual training and started training.



First I trained Cybernetics I so I could install implants and train everything else faster.

While waiting for Cybernetics to train, I bought +3 Charisma and Memory implants plus the basic skillbooks I needed for the first week or so. Social (pre-req for Contracting), Trade, Retail, Contracting, Broker Relations, Marketing and Accounting.

I also bought a Clone Grade Theta (7,750,000 SP) and the books for a bunch of spaceship command, engineering, navigation and mechanic skills I find extremely useful for brand new traders (non combat pilots that is).

Once Cybernetics finished training I installed the implants, remapped to Charisma 30, Memory 24, queued up Social I and Trade I-IV.

Nearly 5 days later here's what his training queue looks like:

Besides trade skills I learned key skills that reduce flight time by improving flight performance or allow me to fit modules that do the same. Early on that mostly means improving capacitor performance so I can make most trips between stations and gates in a single warp.

The 2 most important skills for warp/cap performance are Warp Drive Operation (10% less cap per level to initiate warp) and Astronautics Rigging which allows me to fit Warp Core Optimizer and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer rigs. Warp Core Optimizers reduce cap to initiate warp by 40% (like having Warp Drive Operation IV) and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers increase warp speed by 20%.

A single Warp Core Optimizer is absolutely terrific for very low skills alts but later when the alt has 3s and 4s in all the applicable cap performance enhancing Navigation and Engineering skills you don't really need it anymore. At that point I usually go with 3x Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers which brings the Vigils all my new traders fly up to 10.4 AU warp speed (nearly 70% faster warp speed).

The plan from here on is to get (in order) Accounting IV, Margin Trading V, Retail V, Wholesale IV, Accounting V,  Marketing IV, Wholesale V, Tycoon IV, Daytrading IV, Tycoon V, Trade V, Daytrading V and Marketing V.

Right now he's just training and not actually doing any buying or selling yet. When he does start buying (probably not until he has at least Margin Trading V and Wholesale IV) he'll train his navigation and support skills up a little higher and get the rest of the basic navigation skills (everything except jump skills) too. I'll install intelligence, perception and willpower implants then too.

At some point I'll get Procurement I-IV and Visibility I-IV too. Though I don't really use them now I'll eventually train both to IV just in case I decide to use a remote buying strategy later and need them.

Mindlink Price Crash Coming Soon

In Odyssey 1.1 there are many changes being made to mindlinks.

The most important change from a market player's perspective is they will be available at Concord LP Stores for 20,000 Concord LP and 20m isk with an expected final product sale price of 60-80 million.

With mindlinks currently selling for more than that, we can expect the markets to be flooded with cheap mindlinks on patch day and for several weeks afterward. Prices for all mindlinks will crash from current levels.

Mining Foreman Mindlinks in particular are currently priced over 1 billion ISK each. Expect them to be flooded even more than other mindlinks and crash harder.

So for those of you with big stocks of mindlinks, expecially Mining Foreman links, start dumping them now and get what you can for them before 1.1 lands.

As the word spreads there will probably be a bit of panic among investors with stockpiles of mindlinks. Expect a mini crash before the patch as investors stop buying and start fighting to dump their stock before prices crash hard. Mining Foreman Mindlinks being so high priced will almost certainly crash harder and sooner than the others.

Lucky for me I only have 1 Mining Foreman mindlink so I should be able to dump it within a day or two without taking a loss.

There are also new Navy Mindlinks coming in 1.1 which are expected to go for around 200 mil ISK.

A big thank you to adwisdog for pointing this out to me in comments on another post here. I did know mindlinks were being changed but I'd somehow missed the fact that they were being added to loyalty point stores too!

Update: I already sold my one Mining Foreman Mindlink for 1,399,999,000.00 ISK. It only took 15 minutes of camping and 3 price cuts.

Financial Report - July 2013

Financial report for the month of July 2013 (last month). Trade oriented since trading is how I make virtually all of my ISK.

I buy and sell skill-books, faction/deadspace/officer mods and implants covering all 5 major trade hubs (Jita, Amarr, Dodixie,  Hek and Rens) plus several regions that don't have a major trade hub. I play fairly casually and update orders infrequently, often going several days between posting/updating orders. Some characters get updated more often than others and I update sell orders more consistently than buy orders.

In July I made 22 billion after expenses (exactly the same as in June). Not bad considering the time I spent playing the market was way down, I lost 3 billion to an input lag induced typo and my expenses were up too.



Expenses were up because I bought and fit a bunch of ships for various alts to fly (Tengus, Prowlers, Cheetahs and Buzzards mostly) plus I've been going through nearly 3 times more PLEX the last couple months with 12 accounts now and 4 or 5 dual training.

My market activity was way down. I mostly just concentrated on 3 items and let the rest of my orders sit for almost passive income. For the most part I logged onto 1 buyer on Jita and couriered items to 4 other traders for sale. I did log onto other characters several times to post stock that was piling up and updated most of the orders on all my traders at least once during the month (3 or 4 times on several). I spent a grand total of about 20 hours working the market.

Current net worth is 230 billion with about half in cash and market escrow. Most of the rest is in sell orders and recently acquired stock I haven't gotten around to posting for sale yet.  As I get bigger and spend less time updating individual orders I find myself carrying more and more of my net worth in sell orders. Very little is in assets I don't intend to sell soon, a few ships and some mods I keep in stock for my own use, maybe 4 billion in total.

That's my actual current total net worth, I don't pad the numbers by counting ISK I've earned but have since spent and no longer have. That'd be like calling myself a real life millionaire because I've earned over a million dollars during my life when the reality is I've never had anywhere near a million in total.

Next month I'm going to try to keep the time under an hour a day and concentrate on 13 items instead of just 3 to see how that works out. I also intend to spend some time developing the implants market which has always been my 3rd and least profitable market, after mods and skill books.

More on Input Lag

Pursuant to my Input Lag post a few days ago, I entered a reimbursement ticket regarding market order input lag.

My Ticket

I'm getting tired of getting ripped off due to input lag when entering buy orders.

It happened again today, I entered the numbers for a buy order... I double checked the numbers and realized a zero was missing so I fixed it, checked the numbers again and hit enter.

Then the game sort of freezes for a few seconds, the missing digit appears, the order goes through and I wind up overpaying by about 3 billion total for 10 sisters core probe launchers.

Fixing the order system would make order entry errors due to input lag like this a non-issue.

Make it so when you enter a buy price higher than highest sell order it gets filled from sell orders at the sell order price. And just the opposite when entering sell orders, low priced sell orders should be filled at the price of higher priced buy orders.

The way it works now isn't just stupid, unrealistic and annoying, it also rewards cheating bots who reap most of the benefits of such errors since they usually have the lowest sell / highest buy orders and never have to worry about similar input errors themselves, while punishing honest players for not cheating.

That's the 3rd time now this has happened to me for significant losses (the latest 2 were in the billions).

Please fix this crap!

CCP's Answer

After an initial answer which basically said to post in the suggestions forum without addressing reimbursment. I asked about that and got this response (names removed to protect the innocent).

Hello again **** ****,

Our reimbursement policies are very strict and we can only reimburse if we are able to verify that a bug or server error caused the loss. Any losses attributable to errors in the EVE client may not be eligible for reimbursement nor any losses attributable to problems with a player's system (i.e. computer, internet connection, etc.) or any system owned by a third party. You can find a copy of our policy here.

http://community.eveonline.com/support/policies/eve-reimbursement-policy/

We hope that you understand our position and that you will recover swiftly from the loss.

Best regards,
GM ******
CCP Customer Support | EVE Online | DUST 514 

My Response

Thank you for taking the time to consider this issue so thoroughly.

You support mechanics that favor bots over real players. Mechanics that punish honest players for playing by the rules and reward cheaters for breaking them.

Should we take that as a hint on how the game is meant to be played?

http://merchantmonarchy.blogspot.ca/2013/07/more-on-input-lag.html

Notes

1. I will never post on the official forums for any game again. I learned my lesson on that long ago and stay out of the troll infested flaming cesspools known as "official" forums.

2.  I actually composed my sarcastic response before receiving CCP's answer because I had a pretty good idea what their answer would be.

Input Lag

Another boneheaded typo... Another 3 billion down the drain... Except it wasn't a boneheaded typo.

It was input lag.

Ever notice how sometimes it takes forever to update the market? Well when the game is getting laggy like that sometimes the market price entry input box suffers from lag too. You enter a price check the numbers and realize it's missing a digit or 3, so you add the missing digits, double check the numbers and hit enter.

Then it sort of freezes for several seconds, the missing digits appear, the order goes in and you wind up overpaying bigtime.

That's the third time now this has happened to me for amounts in the billions. The first time I wasn't positive about exactly what happened but I thought it was lag so I've been keeping an eye out for it since. The next 2 times I'm absolutely certain about it. I checked the numbers, they were short, I fixed them, double checked the numbers, hit enter, then watched it freeze momentarily and then overpay.

I really wish they'd fix this stupid crap. The best and simplest fix would be making it so when you enter a buy price higher than highest sell order it gets filled from sell orders at the sell order price. And just the opposite for entering low priced sell orders they should be filled at the price of higher priced buy orders.

Then it wouldn't matter if there are a few seconds of input lag.

The way it works now isn't just stupid, unrealistic and annoying, it also rewards cheating bots who reap most of the benefits of such errors since they usually have the lowest sell / highest buy orders and never have to worry about similar input errors themselves, while punishing honest players for not cheating.

No doubt there'll be a bunch of replies insisting I must have imagined it, I'm crazy, I'm just making it up or it's my computer but it's not any of that.

What I'd like to know is if anyone else has noticed the same thing?

Moving Stock Away From Major Hubs For Good Prices

Sometimes getting a good price requires trying new items and finding new places to sell them at. Lately I've been selling a fair number of ship hulls (among other things). I buy them on Jita and ship them off to carefully chosen stations to sell at (stations besides the 5 main hubs that is).

Here's an example.

Some buyers even bought more than one at a time!

I shipped another 20 manticores out to the same station today and priced them a little higher since there were no others listed.

Manticores normally go for around 20 million in sell orders on Jita so that's around 33% profit. I've bought stacks of 10 or 20 at jita market sell prices, shipped them off via courier contract and resold them for as much as 40 million (100% profit). Some were only shipped 1 jump away though most were 10-20 jumps.

Manticores, Drakes, Crows, Tengus are just a few of the ships I've been selling.

Ships are slowly but surely becoming a bigger part of my business. Away from the main hubs I find the competition on ships isn't as bad as on most things. When prices are too close to Jita prices I'll often post over market, wait a day or three until the competition sells out and then mine sell at a much better price. I figure the competition isn't as bad because shipping hulls takes a lot of cargo space, many players don't have a ship big enough to move hulls in or can't move very many at once and aren't willing to pay for / wait for courier service.

Don't just sell the same stuff everyone else is selling, a lot of things sell well everywhere. Try some of your best sellers in other places, especially high volume items, they'll probably sell just about anywhere. I've had a lot of success getting excellent prices for things nobody else was selling in the area. In some cases nobody (according to market history anyhow) had ever sold one in the entire region!

Knowing who's in the area and what they do can help you figure out what they're likely to buy and what they might pay a nice premium for but don't be afraid to take a chance on something unusual. Sometimes you'll be amazed at what sells and just how much you can get for it.

Training Report - July 2013

Training report for all my characters as of 14 July 2013

My old training report format was becoming a bit unwieldy with so many characters so it's time for a change.

First some numbers:

12 Accounts
19 Characters

18 Traders (all but 2 with 269+ orders)

5 Covert Ops pilots (2 more in training with 1 and 2 weeks to go)
1 Blockade Runner pilot
1 Tengu pilot (another in training with 24 days to go)
1 Recon pilot
1 Rattlesnake pilot
19 Vigil pilots =)

15 PLEX/mo (3 accounts dual training)

I've been working a mix of regional and station trading with a fair bit of hauling / courier contracts between regions for several months now. The Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek and Lonetrek traders have dropped everything worth under 5 million and secondary traders on those hubs are working those items now. Most of my traders have Daytrading V and Marketing V now, the few that don't will have them soon. Most of them also have Procurement IV and Visibility IV.

I started up 6 new accounts a couple months ago. Each account has one trader on it. All of them have Tycoon IV now and are working on either Tycoon V or Broker Relations V. They all have roughly another 1.5 months of training to go before they're finished. At that point I'll probably transfer several of them to other accounts to consolidate accounts and save a few plex.

The original plan for 5 of the new traders was to have them take over the skillbook business on Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek and in Lonetrek. I've already moved all skillbooks worth 5 million or less to the new traders but I've changed my mind about the rest of the plan for them.

I'm going to keep the high value skillbooks on the original traders and only work the cheapest books on the new alts. I'll probably wind up moving all skillbooks worth 10 million or less to them eventually, maybe even 20 million. I've started started buying some other low value items on them too, a few things they'll use themselves and a little dabbling in / experimenting with a few other odds and ends.

That way I'll have all the highest value / most profitable items on one character at each hub and all the low value items on another. The high value traders can be checked on and updated more often while the low value traders can work long term bulk trends with infrequent updates.

Or another option I'm considering is to drop everything under 10 or 20 million and have 1 trader work skillbooks and mods while the other works say implants and boosters.

The remaining new trader has taken over the business on Ichoriya from my main.

I'm getting Contracting IV on all my traders now too because it only takes 14 hours to train and I actually had one of my buyers run out of contracts once while transferring items scattered all around a region to another character for pickup!

Account 1

dual training active

Couster Regional Trader - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading IV, Marketing IV, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting IV. Currently training Marketing V.

Tash Murkon Regional Trader - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading V, Marketing V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting IV. Finished training for now.

Jita Station Trader #3 - 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Broker Relations IV, Accounting V, Margin Trading V, DayTrading IV, Marketing IV, Contracting II. Buys inexpensive modules (T2 and meta 4) mostly for my own use. Currently training Wholesale V.

Future plans: Finish training trade skills on all 3 characters. Then remap Int/Mem and work on flying support skills (mainly Navigation, Engineering and Electronics skills) one at a time. Will probably train at least 2 characters into Covert Ops eventually and might train one into Blockade Runners.

Dual training has allowed me to start training the "spare" Jita trader up too.

Account 2

dual training active

The traders of Amarr, Dodixie and Rens. All characters on this account have 305 market orders with Trade V, Retail V, Wholesale V, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting III or IV.

Amarr Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed),  Currently training Covert Ops and relevant support skills.

Dodixie Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed). Cov Ops pilot. Currently training flying support skills.

Rens Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed). Cov Ops pilot. Finished training for now.

Unless one of these characters moves to another station in low/nul they'll never need to train Procurement V or Visibility V. If they don't join a corporation they won't need more contracts either.

Future plans: I intend to train all three into Covert Ops and remap Int/Mem for support skills training next. After that I'll probably train one into something besides Trade (Industry maybe).

Account 3

Lonetrek Regional Trader - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV, Contracting IV. Finished training trade skills and remapped Int/Mem. Cov Ops and Blockade Runner pilot. Currently training Int/Mem support skills.

Jita Station Trader #2 -  305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V and all other remote skills at IV. Does nothing but trade officer/deadspace/faction mods.

Future plans: Continue training Int/Mem support skills on the Lonetrek trader. Weapon skills don't matter, he's a trader not a fighter.

Account 4

dual training active

Jita Station Trader #1 - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting IV. Does nothing but station trade skill-books. Currently training Int/Mem support skills.

Exploration / Scout / Scanning pilot - Flies Covert Ops (Buzzard), Recon (Falcon) and is training Int/Mem support/scanning/exploration skills. Has all Astrometric skills at IV, most shield, navigation, fitting and exploration skills at IV or V. I don't plan on doing any serious trading on this character. He has 29 order slots, more than enough to buy things he needs and that's it. Currently training Recon V.

Future plans: Continue training Int/Mem skills on the exploration/scout/scanning character. Long term this character will continue following the Covert Ops line into Recon cruisers and eventually Black Ops battleships. Will eventually start a new character on this account or transfer a fully trained trader to it.

Account 5

My Main - Cov Ops, Tengu, Rattlesnake pilot. All by himself on his own account and concentrating mainly on Per/Wil combat skills, with particular focus on missile skills. 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Accounting IV, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading IV and all of the "remote order" trade skills at IV. He hasn't been heavily involved in trade for some time now but does a little low maintenance trading (mostly selling) in various places. Currently training Tengu subsystems skills from IV to V (3 finished, 2 more to go).

Future plans: My main is concentrating mainly on Tengu and Missile skills. I'll probably get Recon and maybe Black Ops too. I hate flying slow ships so battleships are low priority for me though I'll probably get Caldari and Gallente Battleships to IV (both are at III now) for Rattlesnakes eventually. He'll be staying in the Per/Wil remap for a long time yet and will probably get a bunch of Gunnery skills to IV or V too. I'll probably eventually transfer a couple other characters to this account.

Account 6

Hek Station Trader - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading V, Procurement IV, Visibility V and Contracting IV. Currently training Minmatar Frigates V.

Jita trader #4 - 305 orders, Tycoon, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V.  Daytrading V, Marketing IV, Procurement III. Handles the Jita implants market and dabbles a little in boosters. Finished training for now.

Future plans: Finish training Cov Ops + a few support skills on Hek then get Marketing V on Jita.

Accounts 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Six new accounts I started around 2 months ago with 1 character on each account (just before the news about dual training broke). They're all traders following the same training plan with the first two a day ahead of the next two and the last couple roughly a week behind that.

All of them have Tycoon IV, Accounting V, Marketing IV, Daytrading IV, either have or are nearly finished training Broker Relations V and are currently training either Tycoon V or Broker Relations V.

One of them runs the Ichoriya business, the other 5 are secondary traders for Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek and Lonetrek. The 5 secondary traders are currently just handling skillbooks worth under 5 million ISK  plus buying a few mods for their own use. They have plenty of spare orders to start buying other things with.

Financial Report - June 2013

Financial report for the month of June 2013 (last month). Trade oriented since trading is how I make virtually all of my ISK.

I buy and sell skill-books, faction/deadspace/officer mods and implants covering all 5 major trade hubs (Jita, Amarr, Dodixie,  Hek and Rens) plus several regions that don't have a major trade hub. I play fairly casually and update orders infrequently, often going several days between posting/updating orders. Some characters get updated more often than others and I update sell orders more consistently than buy orders.

In June I made 22 billion after expenses. I made over 16 billion in the first 10 days of the month and broke 200 billion. After that I lost most of my motivation to update orders and make courier contracts. I hardly did anything the rest of the month and only made another 4 billion for the last 20 days of the month. I still haven't gotten the motivation back to spend much time working the market yet and it'll probably be a while longer before I do.

Current net worth is 208 billion with the majority in cash and market escrow. Most of the rest is in sell orders and recently acquired stock I haven't gotten around to posting for sale yet. Very little is in assets I don't intend to sell soon, a few ships and some mods I keep in stock for my own use, maybe 2 billion in total.

That's my actual current total net worth, I don't pad the numbers by counting ISK I've earned but have since spent and no longer have. That'd be like calling myself a real life millionaire because I've earned over a million dollars during my life when the reality is I've never had anywhere near a million in total.

Uneven Market Conditions and Uncertain Regulatory Landscape Hampering Trade Finance, ICC survey shows

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) 2013 survey on trade and finance, released today, has found that a continued shortage of trade finance for international trade remains a major challenge for economic recovery and development, with many traders depending on overdraft and other corporate loans to finance exports and imports.

According to the survey, nodes of uncertainty over the US presidential election results, crises in the Middle East, and Sino-Japanese tensions all contributed to the lacklustre pace of world trade which fell back to 3.8% growth in 2012, down from 6.1% the previous year. Sluggishness in the Eurozone economy prompted weak global demand by midyear, as economies in China, India, Brazil and other emerging markets slowed down in turn.

The proliferation of new regulation in recent years has increased cost pressure on financial institutions and depressed markets. Some 65% of surveyed experts said implementation of Basel III regulations is to some extent or a large extent affecting the cost of funds and liquidity for trade finance. While many regulatory changes have already been implemented or proposed, the regulatory future remains unclear as harmonization of regulatory principles remains a major problem for trade financiers and their clients.

The survey positively indicates that despite uneven performance around the world in 2012, the market for trade finance does show signs of slow and steady growth, with temporary trade measures imposed during the financial crisis – including the rise in fees for trade –slowly being removed.

“This shows that financial intermediaries are continuing to satisfy the demand for financing and that investing in trade assets is part of a more sustainable model of banking, said Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, in the survey’s foreword.

Entitled Rethinking Trade and Finance – An ICC Private Sector Development Perspective, the ICC survey reveals that developing economies remain the drivers of international trade growth despite the ever-rising level of regulation in the wake of the financial crisis and a clear trade finance gap for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the southern hemisphere. Yet the resilience and increasing importance of developing countries has become more evident, according to the survey, which says that although developing country exports fluctuated throughout the year, they surpassed pre-crisis levels rising to 8.5% in 2012.

Trade facilitation programmes by multilateral development banks (MDB) also increased in 2012 according to the survey, which predicts the role of MDBs will become even more instrumental in supporting global recovery, economic development and poverty alleviation in future years.

The survey includes analysis of trade traffic data, from financial messaging service provider SWIFT, indicating that by the year 2020, a third of global trade will likely be South-South. The data reveals a signature shift in the Asia-Pacific region where 73% of all export transactions took place in 2012 together with a rise of 2.32% in import traffic. By contrast, import traffic decreased most noticeably in the Europe-Euro zone: a drop-off of 13.5%.

“We are encouraged by the continuing effort to fine tune various capital treatments for trade finance whether at the supranational level, or in national implementation. It is important for the business community to press on with the current dialogue with regulators as there is still a lot to be done. On the macroeconomics front, we also expect to see a credible plan in place for the budget issues that are plaguing certain countries, leading to restored confidence but perhaps with a longer drawn out and bumpier recovery than we hope for,” said Kah Chye Tan, Vice-Chairman, Corporate Banking, Barclays, and Chair of the ICC Banking Commission.

Providing a detailed statistical analysis of the regional and global trends in trade finance, Rethinking Trade and Finance 2013 received responses from representatives of 260 banks in 112 countries. Expanded in scope, the 2013 Survey includes a new section on potential market developments, which includes the views of some of the world’s leading experts in global trade finance on the drivers and potential solutions to a more robust and resilient market.

The 2013 survey also received the participation of two new partners: the International Trade Centre (ITC), to cover credit constraints and non-tariff measures in trade; and Factors Chain International (FCI), providing business trends in factoring.

Rethinking Trade and Finance 2013 fulfils ICC’s commitment to bridge the information gap on trade finance through market intelligence reporting and monitoring that leads to a better understand and markets worldwide.

Thierry Senechal, ICC Banking Commission Senior Policy Manager said: “Trade finance is the oil that powers the engine of global economic growth but despite encouraging signs, this stellar image of the industry is imperilled as trade finance faces headwinds that may completely upend the global landscape in which it operates in the next five years. This includes a welter of regulations, a two-speed financial system, a disruptive deleveraging process and new SME entrants starved of trade finance in several emerging countries.”

source : ICC

Dread Guristas Modules

I've touched on Dread Guristas modules vs Caldari Navy modules stats and prices before here but it needs revisiting.

Most Caldari Navy modules have Dread Guristas equivalents with exactly the same stats, skill requirements and fitting requirements. Other than the names they are identical but the Dread Guristas versions are usually much cheaper.

I've checked more than a dozen CN mods vs the DG versions. All of the ones I checked had identical stats and requirements. Missile launchers (all of them), shield boosters, shield boost amps, etc. I didn't find any that were not identical. I assume the ones I haven't checked yet are identical too.

Caldari Navy modules are purchased from faction stores with Loyalty Points while Dread Guristas modules are drops. Generally speaking the CN versions are available in somewhat greater numbers but there are nearly always plenty of lower priced DG mods up for sale too, especially at the main market hubs.

As far as I'm concerned, DG/CN modules are the same modules and as such should sell for roughly the same amount. If anything the CN version should be a bit cheaper due to being in somewhat greater supply. Yet the cheap DG version sits there piling up at the market hubs and not selling very well, while the (usually) far more expensive CN version not only sells quicker but in greater volume too.

Being a trader this drives me nuts!

I've had CN X-Large Shield Boosters sell for over 200 million each (they're usually 120-150 mil) within hours of posting. Buy orders for them are often over 100 million and rarely much lower. Yet it can take weeks to sell even just one DG X-Large Shield Booster (with the exact same stats) for 60 million on the same station. The same is true for other CN / DG module pairs too, the CN version is usually priced 2-3 times higher yet sells faster. For missile launchers DG are often around 1/2 the price of the CN equivalent. I've seen DG shield boosters and boost amps at 1/3 the price of CN.

This can only be due to players either not knowing DG and CN modules are identical or not bothering to check the price of DG mods before buying CN mods. Otherwise it'd be a no-brainer, everyone would buy the cheaper DG version until stock runs out or the price rises to the level of the CN version.

There is a technique that sometimes works to sell DG modules for more. When the price of a particular DG mod is high, I'll post one for quite a bit more than it usually goes for but still significantly lower than the CN version is currently priced at. Then I'll ask in local chat why the DG mod is so much cheaper when the stats are identical (linking both versions of course to make comparison easy for potential buyers). When it works someone buys a DG mod (or several) within minutes. It's win/win, I get a higher price than usual and the buyer pays less than he would have for the CN version.

I've also noticed the same phenomenon with a single item across a couple other factions. That has me wondering if other modules for those 2 factions are identical too. In fact I'm wondering if there might be several pairs of factions with identical mods. I haven't done any research on that yet but it's definitely something I want to look into eventually.

Hopefully this article will help some players find better deals and save some ISK. Maybe if enough players start checking DG prices vs CN prices it'll help equalize prices too.

Oh yeah, Caldari Navy Torpedo Launchers are for dummies. I leave it to you to figure out why. :)

Mailbag - Order Posting?

This post covers several points I've wanted to clear up for some time about my order posting/updating process. A few days ago I received an in game email with questions along the same lines. After answering that email I realized with a little polishing and expansion on a few points posting it here would be a great way to finally get that blog post done.

The email

love the blog

From: Zosius

Sent: 2013.06.11 10:19

To: Moxnix Induli,  

Hello Moxnix,

I love your blog. have been reading it awhile. I have few questions that i was hoping you can help me with.

When it comes to trading how do you do your order updates? I own 3 accounts in major hubs and update buys and sells 1by1 moving through quickbar simultaneously in all ccounts. This is to see the price balance and reallocate stock or trade more cautios if price is out of balance between the hubs.

This method takes time but is quite profitable. I noticed that I can manage to 1-1.5bil a day if I spent 2-3 hours updating orders one time a day including houling (30min). However after sometime i burned out and got demotivated. I felt in position where finding new ventures was costing more isk/effort  than just updating my items list.

I constantly read that you update very casionally. How much time do you spend updating orders a day and how frequently you do it to sustain such large growth. If you update sells and buys sepearetely, don't you get annoyed once you are done with sells, you move back and update buy orders only to see your sell order is far behind already.

thanks for any advice and regards,

Zosius

Re: love the blog

From: Moxnix Induli

Sent: 2013.06.14 08:24

To: Zosius,  

My Response

Thanks, it's always nice to hear from my blog's readers.

My order updating process is fairly simple but difficult to explain properly. I mostly just use common sense, a simple priority system (do the most profitable things first) and make most decisions quickly by using simple rules of thumb. But there are a lot of rules, special cases and exceptions to the rules which makes it seem far more complex than it is and makes it very difficult to explain in detail.

I also like to mix things up frequently to keep the competition on their toes. When I say I do something a certain way it doesn't mean I never do it differently it just means that's what I usually do most of the time. Hence why I use words like "usually", "mostly" and "generally" so much.

At the most basic I start by checkiing my inventory for newly purchased items. I post most of the new stuff and while posting I'll also update existing orders (both buy and sell orders) for the same items.

Sometimes that's all I do though I'll generally do it on 3-5 of the most important characters. The ones that tend to move items in the highest volume and make the most ISK.

Once that's done, I'll usually (but not always) check all my sell orders on those characters and update those too. When I do that I'll usually update buy orders for those items (the ones I have sell orders for) too.

I also tend to concentrate on the most profitable, highest priced and highest volume items. There are many days about all I do is spend 5 or 10 minutes on each of the 3-5 most important characters checking nothing but sell orders and the top 20-50 items on each character.

If I have more time I'll do a few more characters and maybe update all buy orders on a couple too. I do try to update all buy orders on at least 2 characters once or twice a week but sometimes I skip that and take it easy for a week or so too.

My cuts tend to be big, generally around 10% of the difference between buy and sell orders and I don't normally camp, but there are exceptions to everything. Sometimes I'll cut by 1 ISK either to confuse the competition or because the profit margin is so low I'm only cutting to keep the no-lifers and bots on their toes. Large cuts discourage camping no-lifers and bots, when margins are low they'll often not cut you and let your items sell. It might take a while but after a few days of big cuts once or twice a day they'll usually slow down or stop camping and your stuff will sell. Raising buy prices at the same rate ensures that when the price gap closes it'll be at a decent profit over the price you bought at. Conversely if you don't raise buy prices by large increments too the campers will just continue 0.01 ISKing you out of business.

I hate camping but very rarely when my sales on a particular station have for a long time been greatly reduced by obsessive, perpetual campers constantly 0.01 ISKing me. I'll camp for a short while (a half hour or so), updating several key items every 5-10 minutes to see how the no-lifers and bots react. I'll adjust prices with large cuts and quickly reduce profit margins until I either find the sweet spot where the no-lifers and bots slow down enough that my items start selling again or margins are so low it's not worth my bothering with anymore.

Slightly more often I'll do what I call semi-camping, leaving a character logged in all day while I'm mostly afk (not even in the same room as the computer) but able to drop by and spend a couple minutes checking key items periodically throughout the day. The character might be online 12-16 hours but I'm only actually at the keyboard a few minutes at a time for maybe a half hour in total. This is extremely useful both for finding out just how hard a particular market is being camped and for screwing with the no-lifers and bots that are camping it. It's also a great way to sell off some overstock and balance assets, sell orders, escrow and cash in hand on a character that has too much in assets / sell orders and not enough liquid cash without becoming an obsessive camper and starting a perpetual cut war myself.

I don't worry too much about the price balance between hubs. Generally I have a pretty good idea of the usual prices and when I'm unsure the estimate I get from mouse hovering over an inventory item is usually close enough. I do usually notice when something is priced very high or very low and buy, sell or ship items to take advantage of it. Also there are certain items I tend to buy on 1 station (mainly Jita) and ship off to 1 or more other stations to sell.

Burnout... That's why I sometimes go for a week or so where I don't do much other than let orders sit and post new purchases. It takes maybe half an hour to do that on 4 or 5 characters. Sometimes I even go a few days without doing anything, I just let everything sit for a few days.

I usually spend 1-2 hours a day but there are days I spend far less time and there are days I spend 3 or 4 hours instead. On average it's about an hour a day when I'm taking it easy and 2 hours a day when I'm being more serious about it.

It does take patience and at times it can be difficult to be patient enough. When I find myself getting annoyed or angry is when I realize I'm starting to take it too seriously. I'll log off then and not do very much at all for a few days. The really interesting thing is markets often rebound nicely after leaving them be for a while like that.

Anyhow I hope this helps. I'll probably base a blog post on it later. I'd include your mail in the post but not your name unless you tell me posting your name ok with you.

Notes

1. My response has been edited to correct minor mistakes (typos/grammar fixed, ambiguous wording changed).
2. My response has also been expanded upon in several places to make things more clear and bring up a few additional points I wanted to make.
3. Zosius' mail to me is un-edited. It's a straight copy/paste of the in-game mail he sent me.