May Update

 A slightly more stable month this one. I kept my playtime pretty casual, in part so as not to go overboard and burn myself out, and also due tot eh launch of Cata Classic, which I'd be lying if I said I threw too much playtime into but definitely more than I would normally versus EVE. Still, my current position:

My current net worth is 878.8Bn ISK. That's an increase on April of 37.2Bn, which is a daily average of 1.2Bn ISK/day. On a day by day basis that's quite a bit less than last month, but the first month was always likely to look good as I found bits and pieces lying around and put things up after a long hiatus. I'm pretty happy with this month all things considered.

One major difference this month is that I put some serious cash into "swing trading", which I have also called "investments" previously. Essentially buying things in bulk hoping the price increases. One good item that was pointed out by Oz_Eve was that Hypercores were still a very low price after a half price sale. I bought in in 2 stages, once at 310,000 and again at 365,000 when they usually go for just over 500,000. If they hit that price again I stand to make about 43Bn. Given that there is a direct conversion of 10 hypercores for 1 PLEX in the NES store under normal circumstances, and PLEX is currently trading around 5.3mil, this means the "natural" price of hypercores should be about 530,00ISK. So barring extra sales this is about as safe a bet as it gets.

This all plays into an idea I'm exploring of how to scale my profits by ISK rather than by logged in time. It's an experiment, and by definition a gamble, but if it pays off it's something I can keep doing with minimal clicks (but I might need to start doing greater research, and be more up to date with patch notes).

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Rens Seller

I've done less on this character this month and it shows. 103Bn in sell orders and revenue of just 35Bn. Something to improve next month.

Manufacturing character

Once again done almost nothing here. I have however checked in game that my manufacturing sheets are still accurate, and Raitarus are profitable even with public hauling contracts, so I'll get at least 1 run done this month.

Amarr Seller

My biggest performer, he has sell orders of 153Bn and has made sales amounting to 99.3Bn ISK this month. If I have a limited time to restock this is the character I go for, as it's such a consistent winner.

Hek Seller

Not a huge amount done on this one. Has 46Bn ISK in sell order and has made sales of 16Bn. Essentially half the size of my Rens business. Still on the list to give this one more love.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar in scale to my Rens business this. Currently 111Bn sell orders and income of 36Bn.

Nullsec station trader

Sits in Pandemic Horde's home system and station trades common items (ammo, filaments, minerals etc) and needs surprisingly little babysitting. Made 4Bn profit this month. Money is his own. I'm really pleased with the performance of this character and will look to giving him some more love going forwards.

Jita Buyer

My main Jita buyer, and hold my investments and attempts to sell them. Swithced up my items quite dramatically here this month. I managed to offload all the ships I was holding and swap it for Hypercores, skill extractors/injectors, salvage materials and SoCT ships handed out for capsuleer day. I've already seen some of these increase in value so I think this character could play a key part of my strategy going forwards.

Tash-Murkon Seller

A similar story to last month, just 3.9Bn in sales from 95Bn in sell orders. Dreadful. I need to get around to having another look at this one as it's simply not paying its way anymore.

Amarr station trader

Made 1.4Bn ISK profit this month with very little input. I think this one has real potential so I'm going to keep it going and see if I can give it some more love versus some of the better performers (such as the null trader).

Jita station trader

Acts as a buyer for my Amarr seller, and also does some station trading in Jita. Has made 12Bn in sales this month. Not a top performer but is vital as a buyer and has goo standings (1.21% broker fee) so worth it even just to act as a buyer/seller for my investments.

Sobaseki Seller

This one I have made progress on! I've gone back to my old quickbar for this character, in addition to some more common items to sell there. Mae 6.1Bn in sales versus virtually 0 last month. A little more effort and I think this character will be earning his keep.

So looking at last months plans:

• Maintain over 1Bn profit per day - tick
• Try to come up with a better strategy for my tash-murkon and sobaseki characters - Success for sobaseki, tash-murkon still needs work
• try and get at least 1 manufacturing run done - Failed, but I have checked my sheets are valid.

I think I will keep to the same targets next month. I have family coming down for a few days so my playtime will be a bit less than usual, and I have a clearer idea of the state of play now, so investing more time in certain areas will be easier. Onwards and upwards!

jEveAssets and swing trading

In an effort to improve the way I do things I've been investigating tooling. One tool that I've always been aware of but never used for reasons I'm unsure of is jEveAssets. It is a desktop application written in Java that pulls your characters info and provides a whole bunch of information on market prices over time, your assets etc. I wrote  a post about a month ago where I was talking about a tool that would collect my info and essentially fill in my spreadsheet for me. Well jEveAssets has a tab that essentially does just that:

The numbers here include stations and assets that I do not include in my spreadsheet, such as transport ships I used to haul my goods in and assets in stations that I do not use in trading (mission running/mining ships, rewards from career agents, stuff like that). These numbers also do not include the 20% provision I take against sell orders to account for potentially having to drop my sell order prices in order to make a sale. So even though this screen says I'm almost a trillionaire according to my accounting I'm 140Bn away.

There is also a tracker screen, which I've filtered by system:

With so few data points it is difficult to see much here, but over time this should provide a nice graph of my assets. I wish I'd started using this sooner.

As this has a lot of the functionality that I was looking for, and it is written in Java, I think it makes sense for me to fork this repo and make any changes to it myself rather than re-inventing the wheel. So I'll probably do that going forwards. I am really impressed with this though.

Swing Trading

I've been thinking about how to scale my trading with ISK rather than with time as my value increases. Up until now my profits have largely been driven by how many items I am able to buy in Jita and sell in other hubs. This is fine, and generates a reliable 1Bn or more a day, but I feel like I'm plateauing a bit. I'm not fully utilising all of my trade hubs again yet, largely relying on the big ones of Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek. But adding more will really only scale linearly with the number of clicks I make, and will contribute to burnout which I am desperate to avoid. 

I have been consuming quite a bit of EVE trade media recently, in particular Oz_Eve's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@OZeve He has a lot of really useful insights on a range of trade topics, but he primarily does what he calls Swing Trading himself. This is where you buy items and wait for the price to swing upwards significantly before selling, rather than flipping instantly to get the margin to the current sell orders as profit. 

I have dabbled in this a little over the years. I have this listed on my spreadsheet under "investments". Which is essentially the same thing. However I am now putting a bit more thought and effort into this in the hope that this can drive greater profits going forwards for a not so massive time investment.

In terms of this I have every now and again invested in PLEX, on the general rule that "PLEX price always goes up long term" and before I took my break I also bought some battleships, freighters, jump freighters and capitals as there was a rework coming that should have pushed the price of those up significantly. For the capitals it did, but my other ships were approximately the same price as when I left. I could have held onto these in the hopes that prices will one day rise, but given that CCP have recently said they think battleships are too expensive and the industry changes coming in the next expansion I've decided to sell off as much of these as possible. I've liquidated most of the ships, but I still have a few to go.

On the flip side of that I caught in one of Oz's videos that Hypercores were still very depressed price wise from a sale a while ago. Sure enough when I checked they had a historic price of about 500,000ISK and were currently sitting at  about 310,000. I bought up 200,000 and the price has since started to rise again. At the time of writing sell orders in Jita are at 355,000, down a bit from about 385,000 at the weekend. If they return to their historic value I stand to profit by almost 40Bn, but I will probably sell slightly below that in order to bank the profit and reinvest it elsewhere.

I am going to look for more of these opportunities to subsidise my day to day activities, but I am excited at the potential to really scale my profits with ISK invested rather than simple with the number of orders I have outstanding