Lost and Found

When my PC died in July I was able to get back up and running very quickly thanks to maintaining my data on a server rather than the PC. One thing that wasn't stored remotely was the data for jEVEAssets that I'd been using for nearly two years to track assets over all my characters.

 

It wasn't a major loss as until this week I haven't had the need to locate assets out of game (either due to being offline or not able to find something via the in-game asset system) but the last couple of days I have found myself wishing I had reinstalled it.

 

One Not Four

 

I was doing high sec to null sec courier contracts for friends the past two nights, nothing major but with Bagodan being a ganking hotspot, I no longer autopilot and have exit cyno's online the whole trip now, I tend to remain watching the overview window and using zKillboard and the in-game map to see possible issues ahead.

 

One stop last night was to collect a contract but it was in one of my former base stations and I haven't visited it for several months. On docking I accepted the contract and then went to move it into my cargo bay.

 

Except I stopped, instead of one item (the courier contract) I had four items and a total value of around six billion ISK.

Wait. What is this.

 

Looking at the three assets I wasn't expecting it appears that, at some point, previously I've docked and unloaded a full JF of materials from my towers and then promptly forgotten about them. It's possible I intended to further "value add" by making something from the materials but I've obviously forgotten about them until today.

 

So I contracted the items to my trading alt and then used a freight service to move them for sale in a market hub.

 

Six billion ISK is not to be sneezed at, it's not a huge amount to a trader but that's actually come at a good time as I'm trying to get start-up funds for a new venture and this will be a nice float for that.

 

Hold Up, You Missed More

 

As a result of finding these I went through the assets of my characters and found more "unaccounted" assets spread around New Eden. Some notable finds included:

• one character with full set (one of each race) of unfit Command/Fleet Ships with fittings
• one character having 21 fighters/fighter bombers yet this character could not fly capitals
• over 200 blueprint copies in a station in a system I don't ever remember visiting before
• two Providence freighters that I did not know I owned

When I get home tonight I will be installing jEVEAssets and spending some time running though the results of all assets on all my characters and I'm sure that I'll have to send a pilot out to collect all that I find.

 

I am thank that I haven't had any regional buy orders for minerals for a few weeks otherwise I'd be really screwed with picking up all that in Market Deliveries.

Metamaterial Prices Gone Wild

Disclaimer:

This is not meant as a serious analysis of the EVE Online Market but it is my view and conclusions that I have made with regard to how things are and may be in the future. Your opinion and conclusions may be different and as such no claim of accuracy is made by me.

As part of my daily dashboard I monitor the prices of the four different metamaterials and I've seen a sharp drop in the per unit price over the past three months.

This is especially interesting for me as I produce Terrahertz and Photonic Metamaterials and the drop has seen my profit margins drop from 2 billion to just over 1.1 billion per month in this time and if there is something an industrialist hates, it is losing money.

Market Conditions

Using the Market History Display (provided by Fuzzworks) it is easy to see and compare several market factors 

Nonlinear Metamaterials price since 1st June 2014

Plasmonic Metamaterials price since 1st June 2014

Terahertz Metamaterial price since 1st June 2014

Photonic Metamaterial price since 1st June 2014

Much like any market product there will always be volatility but I've been trying to work out why there has been this drop in price and whether or not to stay I should stay with these metamaterials or move to something else.

Volume is still very good, with over a million units per day being sold, usually a lot more, but it is Photonics have seen the most price drop (from around ~11,500 to ~9,000) even with a large volume being sold daily.

So far there has been no price rebound and the price continues to decrease

Supply and Demand

Supply and demand will impact any price, but if there is a large demand then we'd expect to see the price increase not decrease. Consequently should there be a large supply then we'd expect the price to drop and this is what we're seeing.

I checked the number of Orders and was surprised to see that there was far more Photonic Metamaterial for sale than any other metamaterial, nearly three times in some cases but usually at least double, and as a result there is a lot more market competition for people selling.

In fact checking the other metamaterials I see that they all have a lot more for sale than they have in previous weeks and that the demand is only slightly more than previous weeks. As a result this is most likely why we're seeing the price of each metamaterial dropping so much.

Over Supply or Market PvP

The market is showing that we have an over supply of Metamaterials and this is causing the price to drop, some more so than others, but is this going to continue or is it just a short term result of the Crius expansion being released?

Changes in the Crius expansion have increased the material requirements for T2 blueprints (copies/originals) and this has had the result of more metamaterials being needed per blueprint, so this will drive the demand up. 

However this cannot solely explain the continuous drop in price, I believe that people are Market PvP'ing these materials rather than selling to buy orders (which is logical as the difference between Buy and Sell for MM is usually between 800 and 900 per unit) and this is causing the price to drop continuously as people update their orders and lower their price to be below the "current lowest".

Conclusion

This 0.01 ISK dropping is at times followed by a significant price floor drop of between 1 and 10 ISK which just causes the price to get even lower. There has, a couple of times, been a "White Knight" of sorts who has reset the market buy buying all the low priced orders and reestablishing a higher price, but this person hasn't appeared in recent times and the price has continued to drop.

I'm still not convinced that I need to change anything at the moment, as always I am looking at other sources of income to supplement my reactions, but I still have a few weeks of inputs remaining and the price has not yet hit the level where I feel action is required.

Of course I'd like a higher price as this means more profit for me which means I can invest this ISK elsewhere, pay bills and buy shiny stuff to fly but I'm still making money. Just not as much as two/three months ago, that's market volatility for you.

All Quiet On The South-South-East Front

It's quiet.

Possibly too quiet.

But then again I'm happy that it's like this, it's allowed me to concentrate on grinding standings with one of the NPC corporations in a fairly fast time frame. Zero to 8.34 personal standings with the corporation in a little over a week has meant that I now have access to all the Level 4 agents in the area. 

Mining PvE 

I've found the mining missions not as boring or repetitive as Security ones and much faster to finish. Mining missions seem to comprise one of three types, mining ore, gas or ice. I was told only to do the gas mining missions for best reward vs. risk but I've found that the ice ones (mine 20 blocks of ice) are quick to do with a Skiff or Procurer and are worth doing with Gas. I do decline all the ore missions as they take far too long and usually require two or three trips back to station to drop off what I've mined.

I invested some of my liquid ISK in buying six Ventures and fittings so I could get three characters running missions in the future, the LP rewards (between 7,500 and 12,500 LP per mission with Mining Connections IV) are excellent and I have some good items (Vindicator/Daredevil/Snake Implants) to choose from when I do cash out. 

One really good thing about the mining missions are that they take place in the system with the agent or at most 1 jump away so I don't have to worry much about being caught on a gate. 

Last night I was fortunate enough to get three gas mining missions in a row and not just the "rat free" 7,500 LP reward ones. I got the 12,500 LP mining missions with "drone rats" (which are very easy to tank in a shield boosting Venture) and an hour later I'm 36,000 LP better off and a few million ISK richer.

Towers

My towers are good, we haven't had any siphons since Brave Newbies Inc. moved out and whilst we get a lot of traffic this doesn't interfere with my towers or reactions I have running. 

I did make a mistake last weekend, I bought in new raw materials from Jita about three weeks earlier than I should have so. This caused my liquid ISK reserves to be depleted (read: I spent all my wallet ISK) and now I don't have to buy anything for six/seven weeks apart from fuel.

ISK Today, Gone Tomorrow

The lack of ISK isn't a problem, aside from Ventures I'm not in need of buying anything at the moment outside of tower materials or trading opportunities. I have nearly 20 billion in buy and sell orders active so I'm not really in any trouble it's just depressing to see my wallet balance so low.

The reason I'm so low is I finally bought, and injected into his skills, the Amarr Titan book for one of my characters, not that he has the titan nor do I have the need or ISK for one yet. 

Streamlining Reactions and Saving Money

I run reactions in towers, this is no secret, I spend nearly 10 billion ISK a month to run them through purchasing inputs/fuel. I make good money and enjoy the work.

 

One thing I make, Photonic Metamaterials, requires Promethium Mercurite to produce. The production of which requires Mercury and Promethium, of which the latter is currently around 50k per unit in Jita. I have the mercury thanks to a moon I'm using but I need to import the Promethium and nearly one third of my monthly costs goes on this one raw material.

 

I've been looking at either dumping the production of Photonic Metamaterials or finding a way to lower my costs. Finding a supplier of raw Promethium is nigh impossible and I don't think any I did find would sell to me under market price, after all it's a cash cow.

 

Checking Prices

 

I can't remember exactly when I noticed the price difference between Promethium and Promethium Mercurite but I really should have noticed sooner. Turns out that the reacted Promethium Mercurite is about one third cheaper than the raw material Promethium and, logistically, is the same volume at 1m3.

 

If you can imagine comic blinking and a blank expression on a face, that's how I was when I realised this. I'm only reacting the Promethium and Mercury to make Promethium Mercurite which I then use in Metamaterial production. What if I just bought the processed Promethium Mercurite instead of the raw material, would this work.

 

Show Me The Money

 

A billion ISK a month is not to be sneezed at, I know people who can make this in an hour trading but that's not for me. Being able to save that billion ISK a month means I'll have more money to invest and it may result in a new venture or expansion of an existing one.

 

So I consulted a couple of knowledgeable people and they confirmed my thinking, if I moved form producing Promethium Mercurite to importing it I'd save at least 30% a month in material costs and this would be increased by selling the mercury I'm mining on the market at around 7,500 ISK per unit (~125m per week)

 

I've just had to do a run to Jita to replenish my materials for these towers and instead of buying a months Promethium I've bought the same amount of Promethium Mercurite. I still have about 20,000 units of Promethium to use up but once I do it'll be switched over to Promethium Mercurite and we'll see if my hypothesis was correct.