June Update

 This months update is a few days early as this is the last time I'll log on before we go on holiday for 10 days. Can't wait to get a bit of time off with the family! My current position:

My current worth is 907.7Bn ISK. This is an increase on the end of May of 28.9Bn ISK. Averaged out over 26 days that's 1.11Bn ISK/day. Slightly less than last month, and I suspect there's a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, there's always a bit of a lul in activity into summer as people go away on holiday and spend more time outside like I have. I've definitely noticed a drop in activity across the hubs. Secondly, I'm suffering a little from the effects of some of my gambles investments. A couple of days ago my net worth sat a couple of billion higher, but a slight drop in the hypercore price and a severe drop in golem police skins have hit my net worth as things stand. I'm still very confident both will recover, and some of my salvage materials and PLEX have increased in recent days, to the point I'm considering selling some when I get back to invest elsewhere.

Two things I'm very please about this month though. I've brought my ISK in wallets down to 40Bn from 94Bn the month before, which means I have less sitting around doing nothing for me. I've also kicked off a manufacturing run of a raitaru on my building character. This cost me about 540mil in materials, 15 mil in courier to where I build, about 15mil for the components construction, and 30mil for the build itself. All that comes to about 600mil, and raitarus are selling in Rens (4 jumps from where I build) for about 700mil atm. Not a massive earner but a start and something I'm definitely going to look to expand going forwards.

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

Rens Seller

117Bn in sell orders and revenue of just 27Bn. Disappointing, but I think that's going to be a theme.

Manufacturing character

I've kicked off a run! It won't complete until I'm actually away, but I'll sell it when I get back and kick off another run.

Amarr Seller

My biggest performer, he has sell orders of 167Bn and has made sales amounting to 46Bn ISK this month.

Hek Seller

Has 60Bn ISK in sell order and has made sales of 9Bn. 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 110Bn sell orders and income of 24Bn.

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 3.4Bn profit this month. Money is his own. This character is starting to see a build up in ISK in wallet, so I need to find more items to trade. I'm also starting to dabble in PLEX trading as the margins are good in null.

Jita Buyer

My main Jita buyer, and hold my investments and attempts to sell them. Continued to monitor markets here, and put some more money into PLEX and hypercores whilst selling off some other items for a profit. Given my lower revenues across the board this character and the investments have supplemented the profits a little, but can swing by several billion day to day. Need to keep the long term in mind with this one and keep refining my strategy.

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 0.2Bn ISK profit this month with very little input. That doesn't feel right and has sales of 10Bn, but it is what my spreadsheet says. A bit of a mystery but I'll work on it.

Jita station trader

Acts as a buyer for my Amarr seller, and also does some station trading in Jita. Has made 4Bn in sales this month. Not a top performer but is vital as a buyer and has good standings (1.21% broker fee) so worth it even just to act as a buyer/seller for my investments. I'm also training this guy to run level 4 missions to improve my standings and therefore reduce broker fees further.

Sobaseki Seller

Ticking along nicely. Made 7Bn in sales this month, my only character with an increase versus last month. One to keep chipping away at and growing.

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 - Failed, main focus next month
• try and get at least 1 manufacturing run done - 1 run in progress! More to come.

In addition to the above, I need to update my orders more, as I think this has been a significant hit to my revenues even though I attribute some of the lack of progress to summer. If I can get tash-murkon turned around and update more often (once I'm back from holiday) I should be in for a better month, and the final push for the big T. 

I also need to properly consider what to do next when I hit my milestone. I have some ideas and a bit of time to formulate them but it's finally within sight.

A failed contract and expansion moves

 The other day I had my first ever failed delivery contract, and it really underlined why contracting out your hauling is a good idea. 

I set up a hauling contract for 1.6Bn of goods to go from Jita to Hek, on public contract. I set collateral at 2Bn and the reward to 20mil (1% of the collateral value is my going rate and these are usually completed in a few hours). It's 19 jumps so just over 1 mil a jump. Pretty paltry but a lot of people enjoy that kind of play.

I then logged in a couple of hours later hoping to list those items to find the contract had failed. When I looked up the character who had accepted the contract on zKillboard I was surprised to find the kill there. Not only had this player accepted the contract on the character he intended to haul with (considered bad practice in the hauling community as it makes it obvious you're carrying something of value) but they had also taken their blockade runner through lowsec. Blockade runners in lowsec isn't the worst idea in the world, the window for someone to point you is actually very small if you activate cloak on the same tick your ship starts aligning, but still not something I'd do to save a few jumps. 

I'm not going to share the kill in order not to shame this person but they lost 2.4Bn (including ship and fittings) for a potential return of 20mil. Less than a 1% ROI. 

Now, in the past I have run a blockade runner around highsec several times with over 80Bn in the hold. This is phenomenally stupid as something like this could easily lead to being set back a couple of months progress. So I'm really glad I made the decision to start using public haulers. 

In this case, I pocketed the 2Bn, then immediately bought the same items to haul to Hek, with 400mil banked profit going forwards.

Equinox movements

So the equinox expansion released, along with a sale on PLEX. The new SKINR ship skinning technology requires PLEX to use and trade, driving the price up mid-long term but saw a short term dip in the price of PLEX. As such I snapped up 2000 more at just under 5 mil before the price jumped to nearly 5.3mil. I haven't banked this profit yet but it was definitely a timely time to get in. I funded this by cashing in my skill extractors for 545mil, when I'd bought them for 460mil. A very tidy profit.

I also pooled some money from across my characters and bought more hypercores, now at 389,000 each. This is a bit over-exposing me, but I'm still very confident they're going to go up at least another 20% in the mid to long term. Though it means I'm exposed to the tune of 170Bn ISK now, which is nearly 20% of my net worth. If CCP puts out another half price sale on them I'm screwed, but the payoffs are potentially enormous.

When is a Trillion not a Trillion?

So according to JEveAssets I'm a Trillionaire! Thanks for reading, bye bye!

However. By my accounting I have 901Bn. The reason for this is I take a 20% provision against my sell orders to account for how much I might have to drop them to liquidate quickly, and the fact that the profit isn't realised yet. I tend to look for about 20% profit margin so this seems like a reasonable number to consider. JEveAssets doesn't do this, just takes my sell orders as gospel, and says I have a total net worth of 1,006Bn. My sheet shows a provision of 114Bn ISK, so without that it'd be 1,105Bn ISK.

The likely reasoning for this discrepancy is my prices I take the current sell order value for my investments, which likely differs from how JEveAssets values inventory, but it's close enough.

Still, 100Bn left to go before I can consider one of my EVE bucket list items well and truly ticked. If you'd like to contribute to this by buying up hypercores to push the price up I'd be very appreciative.