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TCS: Losing Money

In a way, TCS has opened doors for me. My mobile, corporation market which I loosely call CIMM (not really, I just thought it up as I was writing) which stands for (be ready for awe) Calamitous Intent Mobile Market, is directly an idea/creation from TCS. While it makes sense to do I’d never have thought of doing it if I had not started to run Bosena and become comfortable with running it.

A mobile market is different to a stationary market. It is smaller and more focused. There are things I do not stock because the small size of the market. For instance, I do not stock hulls and guns unless we live close enough to a high security gank target. If we do, I will stock gank supplies as a specialty item so that spontaneous gank fleets can form and find themselves stocked.

But this is about losing money.

I think that most people that enter the market are more numerically focused then I am. I do not think that is bad. I am more than open about the fact that I am not particular technical and don’t count my pennies. I think that there is a place for those who do not approach the market as pure numbers and margins. If anything, from my trials and tribulations it may make the entire concept more approachable for others. I know that when I compare myself to Detta or other market traders I want to curl up in a dark room and suck my thumb while waiting to be cast out of the station.

The thing about losing money is that accepting the loss can make life easier. I don’t mean losing the over all profits. I refuse to stock things at a loss (unless screwed by a crash but that’s different) but I will stock it at a zero gain. Items, after all, sell each other as well as themselves.

The areas that I lose ISK at are fees. I don’t mean the normal way when I list 50,000 units of ammo for a 100k each and burn through 600 million in brokers fees that I will never see again. I mean things like station fees and listing fees.

One area I steadily lose money in is the fee charges to me by the station. If I improved my standings with the station I’d have a smaller fee and thus more ISK in my pocket. By the number crunching approach, I am losing ISK. By the sanity of Sugar approach, I don’t care. Not caring has been very, very healthy here. Because I do not care in Bosena I am able to branch that lack of care over to my corporate market. Instead of grinding for hours or days or paying someone to grind for me to up my standings, I just ignore the entire thing and don’t care. It is great because it helps me not set limitations on myself that will hinder me or expectations on myself that will discourage me.

Going mobile with the corp is not the most efficient market scheme. I won’t have standings at the corp. I will be buying things that TCS stocks. I will also pull things off the market and lose their listing fees as well as the reserve stock that I keep on hand. I will use my jump freighter non-stop to keep everyone supplied and while it optimizes time it does not optimize fuel. I learned my lesson from the last time and time is greater than fuel when my priorities are aligned in certain directions.

The area that I will lose the most money is breaking the store back down. I have debated leaving them up but then if things delist I will have to go and retrieve them. That just makes me go bleh. In Solitude, I wound up leaving a few orders due to the low value of the items and the lack of cargo space. Since that point they have all sold but removing things from the market is wasteful. But, I'm okay with that. Maintaining them until they sold would be stressful.

The same goes for items delisting due to time. It is one of my weakest areas. Orders age and delist and I kind of go, "Whoops" and put them back up. I should check once a day/week and edit the prices but I tend to forget. Instead, I decided to stop worrying about it. I work with a reasonable margin not .01 ISK. While losing money is stupid and I could stop up these various weak points, fixing them would also start to break some of my relaxation and enjoyment. It may sound dumb but I am more productive being less efficient then I would be if I was more efficient.

Don't fear lack of optimization! Like anything else from playing to blog writing, sometimes just getting it done is more productive then planning it perfectly but never actually doing it. While it isn't smart to do any of the things that I do, I don't let them get in my way to doing what I want to do.

Doin' it wrong, erryday.

Comments

  1. I run horribly inefficient PI planets that would make Gevlon cry. But lost opportunity cost is not a valid reason for me.

    My planets are up and running making a decent profit and I'd rather play eve as spend a full day fighting spreadsheets to calculate optimal setups. Which is weird because usually I'd say I am the kinda guy that would refreain from eating the marshmellow if that would mean I might get two instead.

    Every time I make changes the setup improves though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup. I avoid the market forums and chat rooms because I know I'm bad and don't want to embarrass myself or get into fights.

      Delete
  2. I was going to comment but it got big enough I just made a post about it instead

    http://merchantmonarchy.blogspot.ca/2014/01/optimized-trading-vs-trading-your-own.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you, from someone who approaches the entire game this way.

    ReplyDelete

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