How do trade margins work?

[Muut]

For example:

I buy 141 Water Purifiers at 284.38 each, which costs me ~40097

I ferry them to a station with a Water Purifier list price of 417.59. If I was selling at that price I'd be making ~18782 but in fact I make about half of that at ~9381.

So either the station only gives me about 84% of its list price on each unit (this seems kind of implied? in that the value per unit is shown while selling), or it's imposing a duty on the value of the transaction.

It would make sense that the station's buying at lower than its sell price, but in that case how do I know what the buy price will be to be able to plan trades?

The duty case is probably better because it means some profit is guaranteed as long as the list price is higher than the price I bought for, but I'm kind of suspicious that that isn't how it's figured out - I think I've sometimes been making buy-low-sell-high trades based on the list price and turning next to no profit or maybe even a loss (but without noting the numbers in detail, so only half-sure on that).

[Geeves]

With bonuses and points into trading skill you can eventually sell at higher than their listed price.

Basically it feels like you can completely ignore "margins" at even low-mid-level. Only feels relevant at the beginning or if you never put any points or slots into trade.

[Ironcinder]

The price listed is the buy price. When you dock with the station and highlight your stuff, you see the sell price. The Trader Codex 3.0 can help find the best price you've seen, too.

[EvolutionKills]

Originally posted by Ironcinder:

The price listed is the buy price. When you dock with the station and highlight your stuff, you see the sell price. The Trader Codex 3.0 can help find the best price you've seen, too.

Nope. The Trader Codex just nets you a bonus on trading. If you want to see the lowest/highest/average price per item in the tooltip when you mouse over it, that requires the Market Insight skill. You can get it from certain backgrounds (e.g. White Collar), and you can also find Supervisor crew members with the skill as well.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855000167

[Muut]

Thanks for the info all. Picked up the codex 3.0 last night and that does help a lot, in fact makes planning profitable trades very, very easy (co-pilot also has the Market Insight skill).

So it looks as though:

- Before codex 3.0, you know the buy prices, but there's no way to know what you're selling at until you turn up at the station with the goods.

- After codex 3.0, you also get to see what I think are probably the sell prices(?) for the lowest and highest stations that you've seen (or at least they definitely aren't the list prices).

So with the codex installed it's easy enough to just go for the big margins even if low-margin trades are still opaque enough not to be worth the time (in that you're not going to bother flying to the station with the lowest sell price if the highest sell price isn't substantially higher, in case the buy price at that station ends up eating your profit).

I was kind of hoping that there was a way to claw my way up to riches as a trader ahead of having the top-end gear, but - maybe for a suggestion thread.

[WeaverSong]

It's definitely possible to claw your way to riches without the high end gear. Starting as a trader I've done the deed of starting with a shuttle, and flying out of the starting sector with a cruiser only a couple hours later. All you really need to make it easy is Market Insight, to tell you which deals are good ones, and some sector notes so you can easily check the prices at both stations to compare and find the biggest margins.

[EvolutionKills]

If you want easy money, then you want to be a miner. No need to search for good deals, just empty your hold of whatever you don't need just to make space for more cargo. Doesn't matter if you're getting below market value on that Iron, you have 300+ units that need to be cleared out, and it didn't cost you anything but time to mine it anyways.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855571667

Once you work your way up to a decent Geology rank so that you're getting better materials (you only need 7 to mine Silver from lowly Grey asteroids, and it sells at plenty of stations for 900~1,100 per unit), you'll have all you ever need to craft whatever you want (the Scavenging and Expert Scavenging help with Scrap Metal and Refined Metal respectively), and sell off the extras for cold hard credits. Once you have a decent incoming supply of Scrap and Refined Metal, there is no reason to not have at least Rare (blue) tier equipment in all slots at all times.

Build whatever you want. Buy whatever you need. And if a gank crew drops on you that you can't handle, just keep a stock of Energy Cells on hand to jump out of trouble, until you can comeback with better bought/built equipment.

[Muut]

Originally posted by WeaverSong:

It's definitely possible to claw your way to riches without the high end gear.

I do agree - it's all good if you stick to the high-margin trades.

Maybe just my play-style, but I try to fill in with whatever looks like at least a little profit on trips between stations (if you're making the trip why not make it count!), but - not knowing how low you need to buy to make a profit, that kind of trade is often more of a risk than it's worth in practice.