Station Trading

Station trading is the classic “buy low, sell high” method inside one station or structure. The trader places a buy order below the current lowest sell order, waits for impatient sellers to fill the buy order, then lists the item back on the sell side.

Use station trading when:

• Daily volume is high enough that your inventory will move.

• The spread remains profitable after tax, broker fee, and relist fee.

• Competition is tolerable.

• The item is not crashing on the price history chart.

• You can afford to hold inventory for several days.

Good starter categories usually include ammunition, drones, common modules, rigs, implants, doctrine hulls, mining crystals, abyssal filaments, salvage, datacores, and high-turnover faction or deadspace modules. Avoid low-volume “fake margin” items until you understand manipulation.

Regional Arbitrage

Regional arbitrage means buying goods in one location and selling them somewhere else. The most common example is buying in Jita and selling in Amarr, Dodixie, Hek, Rens, staging systems, faction warfare hubs, mission hubs, High Sec island markets, Low Sec entry systems, Null staging systems, or WH / J Space logistics chains.

The trade only works if the destination price is high enough to cover:

• Purchase cost.

• Sales tax.

• Broker fee if listing.

• Hauling cost or courier reward.

• Gank risk.

• Collateral risk.

• Time to sell.

• Price decay while goods are in transit.

Regional arbitrage should always be checked against destination demand, buy/sell depth, taxes, hauling time, and the possibility that market data changes before the haul is complete.

Logistics Trading

Logistics trading is arbitrage plus delivery. You are not only selling an item; you are selling the fact that it is already where the buyer needs it.

Examples:

• Stocking doctrine ships in a war staging system.

• Stocking mining barges and crystals in ice systems.

• Stocking exploration ships near WH / J Space routes.

• Stocking PI command centers and haulers near Low Sec, Null, and WH / J Space access routes.

• Stocking ammunition and drones in faction warfare systems.

• Stocking structure fuel, scripts, nanite paste, probes, and mobile depots in active regions.

Logistics trading often produces better margins than hub trading, but turnover may be slower and losses from hauling mistakes can wipe out several profitable trades.

Speculation

Speculation means buying before the market moves. This may be based on patch notes, doctrine shifts, alliance deployments, war, event sites, mineral index movement, production bottlenecks, or changes visible in the Monthly Economic Report.

Speculation is profitable when your thesis is early, correct, and liquid. It is dangerous when you buy after the crowd has already arrived.

Market PvP

Market PvP is direct competition against other traders. The weapon is not a ship; it is your order book.

The common PvP behaviors are:

• Undercutting sell orders.

• Overcutting buy orders.

• Baiting competitors into expensive relists.

• Temporarily buying out thin markets.

• Flooding a market to force weaker traders out.

• Splitting inventory into smaller orders to hide total stock.

• Using alts in multiple hubs.

• Selling into another trader’s buy wall.

• Manipulating price history on low-volume items.

Market PvP became more tactical after relist costs made constant tiny price changes more expensive. Broker fees apply when creating market orders, sales tax applies when a sale completes, and order changes can trigger additional broker-fee-style costs. Fenris Creations (FC) reference values use the NPC broker fee formula and confirm that sales tax starts at 7.5% and can be reduced to approximately 3.375% with Accounting V.

Practical market PvP rules:

• Do not chase every 0.01 ISK update.

• Know your minimum profitable sell price before listing.

• Let impatient competitors sell out when the spread is still good.

• Cancel and relist only when the relist fee is lower than the benefit.

• Use several items instead of betting your entire wallet on one market.

• Do not fight a whale unless you know why you have an advantage.

• Never assume a listed order means real demand; check history and volume.