This week’s trades have been very exciting. I talked about making moves to seed market hubs outside of Jita, and I finally made the commitment to do so in Ichoriya. In order to prepare for this move, I took some time to learn a little more about the target hub. I observed the following:

Having reviewed the market history of Black Rise region, it was evident that the region did not see the market volume that you would expect from such a PVP focused area of space. However, with the items that did see market coverage, the per item markup was quite attractive. Due to the proximity to Jita, I imagine the locals took the time to move and stage their own materials for their own use. Of the items that did see market coverage, T2 items far outpaced meta modules in volume. I thought this was very surprising considering the popularity of frigates and destroyers in the region. With the knowledge of the marked high usage of frigate and destroyer hulls, I wanted to focus on weapons systems and upgrades that are suited for these sized hulls.

Now armed with this knowledge, I wanted to be more efficient in how I can observe, place buy orders, and transport goods to market. The most significant change to my usual methodology as a station trader has been utilizing my Corp Bulletin to better keep track of what I intend to buy and sell. All of my trader toons are in the same account and I thought this was the best way I can overcome my inability to dual box looking at two market hubs at once.

I can now populate relevant market price information and compare them between multiple hubs. Given enough time, I believe this can give me the ability to identify the best performers and discard the rest.

WINNERS

Almost all of the big winning trades this week were items that were sold from Ichoriya, most notably Nanite Repair Paste. It’s also worth noting that even though I sold less items from Ichoriya, the value managed to surpass the items sold in Jita. I have been selling items from this system for a while now but this is the first time I seeded this much value. I will definitely take the methodology I developed from this experience to find other potential small market hubs to attack.

LOSERS

All of the items that were unprofitable for the week have been items that I have been holding on to for more than a week. At the time, they appeared to be profitable but the longer the sell order was active, the price simply eventually moved to levels that turned them into a loss. In the future, I will see about being more conservative with buy orders. I will work with smaller but more frequent batches of buy orders; this will give me the opportunity to more intelligently respond to the natural ebb and flow of market prices throughout the week.

Due to the dismal market activity I was able to manipulate from Amarr, I will be placing station buy orders instead of exporting items from Jita. I am a little skeptical as to how many items I can ultimately trade this way, but it should be a better alternative to competing with Jita traders.

Much love to Thaila Lemrenoy for sending me an eve mail concerning some trades to look in to this week.

I hope I was able to show you another facet of trading that you can use for your own gains. Good luck and happy trading.