I decided to take another look to my last 2
years as a trader. This post is going to be an “add-on” to my previous post
http://curses-im-in-my-pod.blogspot.pt/2015/07/trading-2013-2015-financial-report.html so please read it 1st. Everything I previously said pretty much still
applies but I also want to dwell into my expenses (PLEX consumption and hauling
process) and into my Blueprint endeavor.
Here is the Balance updated version in a table
and a quick explanation:
Buy (Isk) field – It’s pretty much everything I
buy from the market. Important note! This includes PLEX that I use to pay
subscription and stockpile a bit, plus my expenses with PVP ships.
Sell (Isk) field – It’s everything I sell in
the market. It pretty much represents the items I trade. I don’t really sell
anything other than I buy in Jita, exception to the occasional faction mod that
I grab from some poor fella who came into my scram range, or some mods that I
might buy at discount from corp, but those number are hardly relevant.
Market Profit (Bil Isk) – This is the profit
value provided by the program “EVE Profit”, using the “First in/First out”
method.
Hauling Expenses (Bil Isk) – Isk spent with
courier contracts. This includes the cost of hauling stuff from Jita do other
empire Hubs and also the cost of hauling PVP stuff from Jita to Curse.
Plex Expenses (Bil Isk) – The value of PLEX
consumed to pay for my accounts or other services (like switching toons between
accounts).
Blueprint Profit (Bil Isk) – Isk made
considering the “Contract Sell Value” minus the “Blueprint Cost”
Blueprint Expenses (Bil Isk) – Expenses related
to the Blueprint research activity, such as courrier contracts, corp office
rental or others.
Misc Investment (Bil Isk) – These represent
several miscellaneous investments outside the Market sphere, such as the
“Ex-Corp mate Stash” posted at http://curses-im-in-my-pod.blogspot.pt/2015/08/trading-blueprints-corp-mate-stash.html and re-selling contracts.
Balance (Bil Isk) – This should pretty much be
my liquid wealth increase in the end of the month
Expenses/Profit (%) – This is the % that all
the expenses represent over all the Profits.
Still, in order to truly analyze the data and
talk better with you fellas, I prefer to show you the data in form of a graph,
so here is the “Overall Graph”:
MARKET PROFITS
In my previous post at http://curses-im-in-my-pod.blogspot.pt/2015/07/trading-2013-2015-financial-report.html I pretty much presented and extensive
view onto my market profits, considering
the value calculated by the program “EVE Profit”, using the “First In, First
Out” method, and how they evolved considering my real life issues. I have
really nothing extra to say about it so we’ll proceed to the next chapter.
PLEX EXPENSES
Back in January 2010 I made the promise to myself
to not spend any real life money on EVE, so I used Plex ever since. This value
represents the PLEX I consume. Extra Plex that I buy and stockpile in my hangar
is NOT considered here.
Looking at the graph, in 2013 and 2014, you can
see I used to spend about 2 Billion in PLEX, while paying for 3 accounts. 2
accounts were training my PVP toons and 1 account was training my Jita Market
toon. In fact, I was so clueless on what to train in my Jita Market toon
because he had indeed already obtained the relevant trade skills long long ago,
that I was actually training him for some neutral support in PVP. He has 0
Skillpoints in gunnery, but has decent drones and missiles skills, being able
to use Blockade Runners, Mining Barges, Missile Assault Frigates, Logistics,
Hictors, Dictors, Recons, Cover Ops, Interceptors, Drone/Missile Battleships,
Tengu, Drone/Missile Heavy Assault Cruisers, Drone/Missile Battlecruisers, Golem,
Thanatos, and last but not least, a Phoenix with T2 Siege module! HELL
YEAH!!... but I really never used it in any of it, except maybe in a guardian
doing some ninja salvaging couple years ago.
This meant that training the Jita Toon was useless,
and with PLEX prices increasing and my own revenues decreasing right after
reaching my all low “Baby Arriving” spike, I decided to drop 1 account,
reducing my expenses. In October 2014 I have a low spike in my PLEX expenses because
I had to use 4 PLEX to move relevant market toons between accounts.
The following month I had indeed a reduction in
my PLEX expenses, but due to the permanent price increase, I’m spending as much
isk now with 2 PLEX as I was back in March 2014 with 3 PLEX… Auch…
BLUEPRINT PROFITS/EXPENSES
I recently started the whole Blueprints
Research endeavor in May 2015, and comparing to my my “Market Profits” the
income is truly…. Low. Not only that, you can see I had a huge “Blueprint
Expenses” (about 2 Billions) in July 2015. This is mostly because I needed to
train my Market toons with proper research skills,
consuming 2 PLEX to activate multiple character training in same account. Since
August 2015 I have 4 Toons with the necessary skills to research low tier BPOs.
These 2 PLEX were not included into the “PLEX
expenses” category for a simple reason. I want all the expenses directly
associated with the Blueprint endeavor to be properly separated, in order to
have an idea how long it’ll take to retrieve my initial investment.
In continuation to my post http://curses-im-in-my-pod.blogspot.pt/2015/09/trading-blueprints-where-to-research.html, using a
corp office and putting all the blueprint in corp hangar is really awesome!
Every Blueprint is avalable to any of my toons, and every toon of mine can
deliver jobs, no matter who started the job. Everything is really available to
all toons and makes it all pretty easy.
During May, June and July my Blueprint endeavor
consisted in researching low tier BPOs to the max, and sell them in public
contracts in Jita.
In the end of September my initial investment
of 2 billions was pretty much covered, but I decided to upgrade the operation a
bit more… I installed a small POS with an Hyasyoda Lab in order to research my
BPOs faster. I want to start researching higher tier BPOs and I trully only
need to undock and go to the POS once per month, so not big hassle. I purchased
already like 6 month of fuel.
I used this opportunity to buy “Beancounter
MY-703” and” Beancounter RR-603” to 2 of my toons, to increase the reseach
speed. They cost around 25 mil and in theory increase the research for 3%, but
in reality, due to how EVE stacks bonus it’s really only 1% in the end… Not
really worth, so I ain’t buying more to the rest of my toons.
This means that I ended up investing a total of
around 700mil, even though I can get some isk back if I sell the Tower later
on. I’m also considering the POS Fuel in stock as an expense.
The total balance for the Blueprint endeavor is
-708 Millions, meaning that 6 month after starting with the whole process I
ain’t achieving a positive balance just yet, mostly due to investing in a POS.
Still is really not a big problem, and a positive balance should be achieved by
the end of October.
In August I decided to expand my business a bit
more and decided to start making BPCs too. I dislike how little low-tier BPC
are worth, so had to do some research and decided I’d try to sell, Sov Infrastructure
Upgrade BPCs after researching the BPOs slightly. Currently I have 1 Billion
invested in Sov Infrastructure Upgrade BPCs BPOs researched up to ME/TE 5/12,
with the main intention of creating BPCs. This is really not an “expense” and
more an “investment” because I can try to sell these BPOs later on at a profit.
You can also see the results in the following
table.
In September I sold 189 mil worth in BPCs, 956
mil worth in BPOS, for a total of 1.1 Bil from around 50 completed contracts.
BPOs represented 83% of the Blueprint profits. I have around 85 outstanding
public contracts in Jita waiting for you to buy them all.
My objective if for the whole Blueprint
endeavor to pay for a PLEX per month… Not quite there just yet, but very close,
if it maintains the same results.
The work involved in researching BPOs is also
minimal, with only a few easy clicks, though the biggest hassle is indeed
dealing with expired contracts and putting new contracts up. Comparing
Blueprint Profits to Market Profits might look as they’re minimal, but is still
good easy isk, and 1 billion in a month is nothing to scoff at!
HAULING EXPENSES
I stated previously that I use Red Frog Freight
to do my hauling, but it wasn’t always like that. I used to autopilot freight
runs from Jita to my hubs, and when I only traded 1 billion at a time, it was
really not a big problem. Eventually, my business grew and I was putting 4
billions into my AFK autopilot hauling freight. You can already imagine what
happened…
So after I got suicide ganked for a total of 5
billion loss (including my Obelisk), I turned over to Red Frog and pretty much
never undocked again.
I went to check my hauling expenses and put
them into the “Overall Graph”. I’ll link it here again so you don’t have to
scroll up.
Hauling expenses have been pretty much minimal
from October 2013 to October 2014, followed by a small increase up to February
2015 and huge increase since that date. This is mostly due to Red Frog Freight
increasing their rates by A LOT! Going from Jita do Dodixie cost 8.5 mil in
October 2013 and went up to 26 mil in September 2015. Suicide gank groups have
proliferated in empire, even if we exclude events like “Jita Burn”, so users
are paying the bill.
Not only that, in order to easy the logistics
load onto my corp mates and because I do have isk available, since march 2015 I
started paying Black Frog Freight to haul my stuff from Jita to K-QWHE in
Curse. Each run costs around 370 million. Even though is not a market related
expense, it’s an expense that does makes me a hole in the wallet, so I need to
include it.
Here is my hauling expenses table:
HAULING TRIPS
I feel it’s also interesting to take a look
into my Hauling trips per hub stats. It’s pretty accurate to say that hauling
trips can represent fairly nicely the volume of business in each hub,
considering that each trip takes around 1 Billion worth of stuff. Here is the
graph:
In October 2014 I took 5 billions to
Tash-Murkon hub, but it did not provided good results. I can even understand
why. Tash-Murking is a small hub, too close to Amarr and it sells, mostly cheap
mods that I run away from. It’s not the place to sell structures, implants,
capital mods or faction mods. It’s a place to sell ships modules and even then
at a small rate. I quickly abandoned that experiment.
In the beginning of 2014 I actually traded in
Amarr, but I was never too fond of the results. Profit margins crashed too fast
for my taste due to lot’s of competition. I believe Amarr to be better place
for station trading rather than regional trading since it has an already
considerable movement. Volume taken to Amarr decreased during 2014 and I
eventually abandoned it completely in 2015.
In late 2013 I traded in Rens, but also never
liked the results much. Generally there were good profit margins, but
competition was weirdly large. I left Rens for dead up until January 2015, when
I tried to bring it back to life, but honestly at this point I was having too
many market orders to manage daily, considering I was also trading in Dodixie
and Hek, so Rens entered hibernation again.
Dodixie is my good old mate, being my favorite
hub up to March 2015. Decent margins, decent sales and not too much competition
in my sales categories, as long as I updated my orders once per day, or profits
would drop to 0. Things changed after march 2015, partially due to my fault.
Not only I stopped updating my orders daily, but I tried to sell more and more
faction mods in Dodixe, leaving implants, capital mods and structures behind.
Both were bad calls. Faction items in Dodixie have way way more competition
than other categories and profit margins are shattered faster. Also I could
achieve good profits in Hek while only updating market orders once per 3 days
or so, representing less work, and therefore contributing to put Dodixie a bit
in the side.
Hek was indeed a great surprise and success. I
went to Hek after leaving Rens in December 2013 and was love at first sight. It
pretty much went from 0 to Dodixie levels in a couple month. Also I expanded my
sale items list in Hek, specially faction mods that did not work all that well
in Dodixie. After march 2015 I decided to give Hek a big boost in volume,
mostly because like stated previously, I could have good profits with less work
and less market orders updates. Even though this strategy worked nicely and my
profits have been consistently better, with less work, it does represents a
vulnerability in my strategy. If “something happens” to Hek, I’ll be in major
trouble, because I’m indeed putting all my eggs in the same basket… I’ll try
invest a bit more in Dodixie to spread more my investments.
HAULING SUICIDE GANKS
I could not skip to talk about suicide ganks. I
requested around 800 trips in empire, from Jita to other hubs and got suicide ganked
8 times, so about 1% of my trips. I supose it’s not too bad. Still suicide
ganks are annoying because even though you get your collateral back, you’re
still losing Isk bigtime. If stuff is not in the market, then is not making me
a profit, not to mention that the time I spent buying all the stuff is completely
lost.
My last suicide gank was in September 2015, and
the Red Frog pilot greed also probably had a role to play in it. The pilot took
2 of my contracts to the same hub, at the same time, in the same freight,
moving effectively with 2 billions worth of stuff, thus making himself a
juicier target. After this event I started looking for alternatives and joined
“Haulers Channel” ingame.
These fellas pick up public contracts linked in
chat, so I decided to give it a shot, while choosing my own reward and collateral.
I made a small test and decided to maintain the reward I’d give Red Frog, but I
increased the volume of stuff hauled to 1.6 Billions and set the collateral at
2.0 Billions.
Guess what… IT WAS ALSO SUICIDED GANKED…
seriously?! The first ever public courier contract I gets blown into pieces.
Still after the initial impact I thought about it a bit better and it didn’t
turned out all that bad. I just happened to make 400 million profit in 1 day.
Maybe even more than I’d make in the market, considering I have around 18%
average profit in my market stuff. Can’t really decide if this public courier
contract was a failure (cargo did not arrive destination) or a huge success
because I made a decent profit. Surely enough, this “profit” will not show up
in the “logs”. In order for this “profit” to no disappear into thin air, I manually
inserted the 400mil profit into my “Misc. Investment” category… I’ll get on
that later on.
And yes, I’ll definitely be making more public
couriers with 1.5 billions in cargo and 2 billions collateral. I just need to
make sure I don’t mix up the “reward” field with the “collateral” field while
putting the public contract up…
MISCELANEOUS INVESTMENTS
I been trying to expand my investments, mostly
via the contract system, because I already have a list of 600+ items to
integrate the Market Regional Trade. These investments consist right now mostly
in:
-
Ex-Corp Mate Blueprint Stash initially posted at
- Capital BPOs re-sales
- Other weird stuff
Concerning my Ex-Corp Mate Blueprint Stash,
after the initial 675 million investment in July, and considering the base cost
of a BPO 11,7 mil (the final value was reached dividing the 675 millions per 58
BPOs) and the BPCs for free, I achieved an income of 979 mil, translating on a
profit of 523 mil, from 60 public contracts.
While trying to escalade my Blueprints endeavor,
I noticed that some smart fellas are able to buy researched Capital BPOs at a
good price, and them resell them at a profit. Of course I added those guys to
my contacts in order to analyze better their methods, by looking at their
contract history and having a glimpse on how to make good isk the same way.
Right now I invested in some researched Capital BPOs and am trying to sell
them. Let’s see how goes. I made 181 mil profit reselling researched Capital BPOs
As for weird stuff, I designed my spreadsheet
to include stuff like a suicide gank profit or loss. Since I know I made a 400
mil “profit” from my last suicide gank, I decided to include it in the “Misc. Investment”
category.
OTHER PROFIT/EXPENSES
There are some factors that are not represented
in my spreadsheets. For example, from time to time I bring faction
mods that I looted from my kills, from Curse to Empire. These are acquired for
“free” or at a low price from Corp Hangar and then sold in a Market Hub. These
profits are not properly accounted for, but tend to be pretty minimal.
BALANCE
Finally, taking in account all the income and
all the expenses we obtain the “Balance” and it pretty much represents the isk
that I earn each month. Here is the “Overall Balance” graph again so you don’t
have to scroll up.
Not much more needs being said about it, except
that I want my balance to be HUUUUUUGGGEEEE. Easier said than done ofc,
specially because I want to continue spending no more than 20-30 minutes per
day (in average) doing market stuff or earning isk.
In order to try increase my profits, I’m trying
out the whole low tier Blueprint Research and Sov Infrastructure Upgrade BPCs project,
as well as trying to resell researched Capital BPOs.
In order to diminish my expenses, that tend to
eat around 30% of my profits, specially after Red Frog increased their prices
around may 2015, I’m trying to put up some public courier contracts in Haulers
Channel, at more advantageous terms than provided by Red Frog.
Lastly, according to EVEAssets my wealth goes
around 130 bil. The reason I’m putting this “statistic” for last is because I
don’t really care much about this number. The only reason I want a
HUUUUGGEEEEEE balance is to be able to buy many ships to blow up in space. It’s
much more important for me to achieve an easy, fast and efficient process to
make a lot of isk monthly, rather than having many assets. My asset’s job is to
provide my daily fix of adrenaline and meet it’s creator at the Source in a blazing explosion!
