A Trader's Guide to $1,000,000,000

Table of Contents

• Trading Strategies / Tips
• Steps to Your First Billion!
• Flower Running Portion
• Basic Trade Terminology
• Answer These Questions For Me?

Check out my other Guides to make your first $1,000,000,000!

• A Mugger's Guide to $1,000,000,000

Trading

Est. time to first Billion: 4 Months
Risk Factor: 2/10
Difficulty Level: 8/10
Patience Level: 10/10
Minimum Requirements: level 15 character to have the ability to fly (not necessary at first, but helpful in the long run)

It cost money to make money. The forever struggle of being a trader....It ain't easy being a trader. In fact, if your not prepared for it, you could very easily lose money with this way of making money. Granted the money you could lose, will almost never be a LARGE amount in the grand scheme of things, because if you're trading correctly, you should at least get your money back if/when you sell it. Trading is a relatively "risk-free" way of making money. Of course , If you want to be a trader, you will want to follow the traders creed: Buy low, sell high, be patient, and know its strictly business. You got to be able to dedicate a lot of time to be a full-fledge trader. The more active you are, the more market trends you will catch and profit you'll be able to obtain. You bazaar is your best tool. Every trader needs one, so cough up the 17mil to buy one with points. Hope this guide helps those of you that are interested in going into the trading business!

Trading Strategies/Tips

Buy ___, Sell ____.Its common sense really, but some people don't fully understand what it takes to do this. You must be active if you want to become a successful trader. With a higher activity level, more rewarding opportunities are present to make a profit.

Create a trading thread. Once you have a bazaar, you will also need a "trading thread". This thread should be located in the trading post forums and will be focused on what you're CURRENTLY selling/buying. This list needs to be updated every time you are looking to buy something new AND when you're no longer buying something. You'll want to keep editing your old post so that people get a chance to "up-vote" your thread and make comments on your thread like "trust trader, thanks for the quick sale!". These things might not seem important at first, but you'll notice a huge difference when people choose you (a trusted trader) over someone that keeps posting new shit all the time. You want to make a name for yourself and have people know that you are here to stay. This will bring in new business all the time as well make people feel comfortable with selling their items to you over other people because they'll feel like their getting a good deal (when in fact your pricing should be the same as everyone else in the forums).

Don't be afraid to take a risk. If that cesium costs 175mil, but you think you can sell it for 185m, try for it! In worse cases, you'd be able to get your money back or maybe lose a small amount. Minor set-backs shouldn't scare you away from constantly trading.

Timing is everything, yes even in trading. From the times of 4am - 10am TCT, I've found it easier to get the best profit from the item market. The reason behind this is mainly because there isn't a whole lot of other traders online (still some, but the majority are typically away and cant trade) giving you nearly free-range to any deal that comes to light. Once you get into a groove of trading, you'll notice that there's community in it.

Never invest too much. When you go to buy an item from someone, make sure you're not buying something that has recently just been "inflated" by a person that is trying to Buy the market. Keeping up with trends is a good way to make some quick cash as well (see terminology below).

Track everything. A good trader creates an excel sheet or a google documents page to track all of your large transactions. If you play on multiple computers, its easier to set up a googles doc excel file so you can open it up on any computer and keep data the same throughout playing. I can't tell you how many times I've saved myself for not making the same mistake twice. What I mean by this is I tracked a large purchase, made note of it, and when I finally sold it, I made little to no money on the item. Years later, I attempted to do the same type of transaction but realized that I had failed this in the past and I was to not follow it again. Granted, that shouldn't be the determining factor as to why you don't make the deal, there are other parts at play here and a good trader considers every possibility.

Save some money for personal use. If you've just started out and have nothing for a bank, I always suggest putting away at least 10% of your profits towards a bank every time you bank account ends. Compounding your interest on a bi-weekly investment (every 2 weeks) yields the best results. There are many investments that will increase your gains on bank interest. For example 10/10 merits on bank interest with increase your bank interest rates, TCB stock will increase your bank interest rates and being in a 10* Oil Rig company will allow you to invest 50% more than the allowed cap (3bil total). Once you get capped out with these upgrades, its an easy free 40mil a week (or rather 80mil every other week).

Sorry we're closed! When you go offline, it's a good practice to "close" your bazaar to prevent people from sniping your money.

Flying ain't no thing, like a chicken wing. A traders only goal is to make money. If you have the ability to fly, you can make some serious bank traveling between countries to buy items and reselling them on the item market for a huge profit margin. Buying drugs and flowers are the most common things to purchase. If your focusing on drugs, at first you'll want to start out at Cannabis, work your way to ecstasy, and finally finish on drug running xanax. Surprisingly, ecstasy has the best profit margin, but since your limited to carrying a max amount of items back with you to TC, xanax is the better option when buying/selling drugs. EX: 20 ecstasy will yield about 150% profit, 20 xanax will yield about 115% profit. However, with respect to profits, you'll earn about 2.2m a trip with xanax and only about 470k with ecstasy. Again, ecstasy is a good start, but xanax, in the end, provides a better profit margin versus time and limited carry items.

Knowledge is power. Before leaving TC to travel and buy cheap items abroad, check the travelrun website and see how prices are doing. Some traders/runners use this website religiously and update it on an hourly basis. It's a good tool to use when planning your next trip to see what is "in stock" and how much prices are (since drug prices fluctuate constantly). Another tool you can utilize is the IRC channel #DrugDen. This channel is kind of a large channel for traders to meet up and help each other out in regards to running for items abroad.
Drugs: http://travelrun.torncentral.com/drugs.php
Flowers: http://travelrun.torncentral.com/flowers.php
All Items: http://travelrun.torncentral.com/itemall.php

Trending is for retro-hipsters! HAHA, if that were only the case here, but alas its not! Swallow your pride and jump on these bandwagons when one arrives. They are always profitable if you manage to jump on early enough. The image below shows you how to view items in the item market to figure out which items are trending.
[image: s3.amazonaws.com]
If the line goes up, it's trending. If the line goes down, its not trending. Simple. Of course the trendline here was added in by me (the black line), but this shows how the drug "opium" is currently trending. It's worth investing in on opium on the item market to try and make a profit off of. The image below shows how a trendline can go negative.
[image: s3.amazonaws.com]
If I remember right, this item was the flamethrower item. You can tell here that this item has significantly decreased in value over time. A trader should AVOID these types of items!

Filling your coffers. As a trader, you'll want to carry around spending money on you at all times in case a nice deal arrives at your doorstep. Avoid major loss by storing your money in your properties vault or faction's vault (or company vault if you own one). Once you unload all your money into an item like this, you'll want to recover your reserve bank as fast as possible to be ready for the next big sale. To do this, promote on your thread that you're selling that specific item(s), and hit the trade chat.

Don't overthink it. TC's item market has a shelf-life of about a year's time. Meaning, when you go to look at the chart and determine if an item is trending or not, avoid looking at an item's value over the past 3 years. Follow below for examples of what to look for:

• Last Month - Use this when you want a detailed overview of how the item is doing recently.
• Last 3 months - I do not use.
• Last 6 months - Use this to determine trend lines and compare how the item intends to do in the coming months dependent on trendlines.
• Last 1 year - Use this to find any market spikes in conjunction with the "all time" option.
• Last 3 years - I do not use. Not needed since there is an all-time option.
• All-time - Use this to see if an item has a "common" trend pattern. Meaning if an item raises based on seasonal times. Things like cans, medical items, and even donator packs follow a typical trend pattern.

Annnnd, SOLD! Don't forget about the auction house. This has always proven to be a GOOD source of finding cheap items for me to re-sell. Plus, people forget about it all the time, so it's easy to make a profit off some of these items. Of course, before placing a bid, you'll want to do your research and know how that item will sell once it's your turn to sell it.

Steps to your first Billion

Starting at $100,000 and ending at $1,000,000,000.

Step 1: Skip this step if you already have a bazaar and some spending cash
Est. time: 1-2 weeks
End goal: buy a bazaar, and earn 10mil spending cash (27mil total)

Our goal in step 1 is to get 17mil because you will need to obtain a bazaar. This costs 250 points (roughly about 17mil).

Assuming you JUST started the game, you already have $100,000, you'll want to buy items from the city and turn a profit off them on a daily basis. Selling items through trades on the forums is what you'll likely have to do until you reach earn enough money for a bazaar. It'll be tedious at some points, so getting a loan from someone (faction mate/friend) would be recommended to help streamline this process. If you cannot get a loan, the est. time it'll take to make 17mil off 100k would be about a week or so.

At this level, your goal is to always buy bricks (an easy 50k a day) and buy items that are worth around 10k (or lower) a piece. Most players don't dabble in the trading business for items that are worth less then 100k, so it'll be easy to find low valued items for cheap. In some cases, you might even be able to find players that are offering up a $1 sale. Typically the players that are having a $1 sale are the ones trying to clear the inventory or just don't want to bother with trying to market these lower valued items due to their profit margins not being good enough. I wouldn't rely on this as a main source of income though because these come up rarely and are often posted in the "trade chat" (which if you were active enough, you can catch more then you think).

Items you should try to buy are the following:
- All $1 sale items
- Cannabis (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)
- Ketamine (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)

Step 2:
Est. time: 2 weeks
End goal: 50mil

At this point, you just bought your bazaar and now have no money again. -_- You'll have to repeat step 1 until you can muster up about 10mil.

Once you muster up some spending cash, your next goal would be to upgrade to tier 2 on your buying scale. You should be focusing on buying items that are worth 100k-1mil. Buying items in bulk is a good way to get a decent discount, but also flying to other countries and buying items at the overseas stores and selling in your bazaar for a nice profit would be ideal. Unfortunately, you have to be level 15 in order fly to other countries which means you'll have to progress your character to at this level. If you can manage to get to the point of flying, buying cheap drugs and traveling back to sell them for a profit is ideal. The best drug to do this with is Ecstasy. The ultimate thing you can do to boost your profit margin is to fly for flowers.

Flower running is going to be the best turn around when looking at profit margins at this stage. Below is a cutout of what my excel table consists of with respect to CURRENT flower pricing.

Place	Flower	Profit /flower	Time (Airstrip)	Trips /Day	Items /Day	Profit /Day	Profit /Day + Rent *
Mexico	Dahlia	3500	18 min	31	689	$2,411,500	$1,931,500
Cayman	Banana Orc	10000	25 min	24	528	$5,280,000	$4,800,000
Canada	Crocus	12400	29 min	21	466	$5,778,400	$5,298,400
Hawaii	Orchid	41300	94 min	7	160	$6,608,000	$6,128,000
UK	Heather	62000	111 min	6	137	$8,494,000	$8,014,000
Argentina	Ciebo	66500	117 min	6	130	$8,645,000	$8,165,000
Switz	Edelweiss	42100	123 min	6	124	$5,220,400	$4,740,400
Japan	Cherry Blos	88500	158 min	4	97	$8,584,500	$8,104,500
China	Peony	94000	169 min	4	91	$8,554,000	$8,074,000
UAE	Tribulus Om	102000	190 min	4	81	$8,262,000	$7,782,000
SA	African Viol	87000	208 min	3	74	$6,438,000	$5,958,000

* Cost of renting a PI can vary. I set the cost of renting a PI at $480,000 a day because you can rent a PI on average around 450k, plus the 30k fee to hiring a pilot.

The chart above takes into account that the trader is spending no more than 5min on the ground at each landing spot. You can tell which flower sells the best (bolded) if you update your stats on a daily basis. The Ceibo flower from Argentina isn't always the best flower to run for, but as it stands currently, it is. You can tell that the Heather or Peony is close behind. Flowers fluctuate in price on a daily basis, and most traders get caught up in flying for flowers as their main source of income. Where is that is a respectable source of income, it's not a traders dream to continue to practice these methods. Mainly because traders at heart want to stay active IN the city and try and get better deals this way. But if time/dedication is somewhat of a problem for you, then this is always an option to revert back on. You can EASILY make 100mil a month off flower running, especially if you set alarms to log in right when your character lands at a destination.

NOTE: Before leaving TC to travel, you will want to check to see if there are any flowers in stock. You can do so by clicking here!

Selling Points Vs Flower sets.
As a trader, you're looking for the best profit margin you can obtain. To save you the trouble of going through the math and watching market progression on each flower item, its almost always better to trade in flower sets for points and sell the points on the points market. In fact, you'll earn about 9% MORE money if you traded in your flowers and sold them on the market.

FLOWER CHALLENGE!
I challenge anyone that doesn't already have the museum unlocked to try this challenge! It takes 25 weeks (without any special help; IE Faction upgrades, company specials, special use items) to complete all education course to get a bachelor in history, and in the time it takes to start and finish these education courses, you would have saved up nearly 20,680 points in flowers. In 175 days (25 weeks) you could have 20,680 points: this is calculated if you 1) lived in a PI 2) Could carry at least 22 items with you from other countries 3) could manage to travel from place to place with only 5min in between flights and 4) had enough money to pay for 2,068 of each flower from each country (roughly around $2,400,000 will buy you 2068 of each flower if you bought them from their country).

The PROFIT you'd earn off selling 2,068 flower sets would be around $63,480 a set (that's roughly $1,218,600,000 in profits after 175 days). If you RENT a private island,

VS

The PROFIT you'd earn off selling 20,680 points (10 points a flower set) would be around $65,450 a point (that's roughly $1,353,506,000 in profits after 175 days)

You would be making an extra $134,906,000 in PROFITS if you traded in your flowers for points at the museum instead of selling the flowers outright. That's roughly an extra 9% profit.

Place	Flower	Profit /flower	Time (Airstrip)	Trips /Day	Items /Day	Profit /Day	Time to get 2k flowers
Mexico	Dahlia	3500	18	31	689	$2,411,500	3 Days
Cayman	Banana Orc	10000	25	24	528	$5,280,000	3.91 Days
Canada	Crocus	12400	29	21	466	$5,778,400	4.44 Days
Hawaii	Orchid	41300	94	7	160	$6,608,000	12.92 Days
UK	Heather	62000	111	6	137	$8,494,000	15.09 Days
Argentina	Ciebo	66500	117	6	130	$8,645,000	15.9 Days
Switz	Edelweiss	42100	123	6	124	$5,220,400	16.67 Days
Japan	Cherry Blos	88500	158	4	97	$8,584,500	21.31 Days
China	Peony	94000	169	4	91	$8,554,000	22.71 Days
UAE	Tribulus Om	102000	190	4	81	$8,262,000	25.52 Days
SA	African Viol	87000	208	3	74	$6,438,000	27.93 Days
Price per Flower	63480	Avg Flowers	2068	Total Days	169.40

NOTE: I'm not actually challenging you, this just shows you a perspective window into how profitable flower running can be. Also, this isn't the "end" of my step-by-step guide because in my eyes, flower running technically doesn't count towards being a trader. :S

Items you should try to buy are the following:
- All $1 sale items
- Points
- Item Market vs Bazaar "Good deals"
- Any and all flowers (buying in other countries yields the best profit margins)
- Xanax (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)
- Speed (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)
- Opium (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)
- LSD (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)

Step 3:
Est. time: 1 month
End goal: 100mil-500mil

At this point, you're starting to get the hang of what it takes to be a trader. Buying low, and selling high seems as natural as a decent poop on your favorite toilet (we all have a favorite toilet, don't pretend you don't :P).

Your next goal would be to upgrade to spending money on tier 3 type item. You should be focusing on buying items that are worth 5mil-20mil. Again, buying in bulk is ideal because you'll earn a better profit once you sell them individually. You'll start to notice though that most items that are worth around 5mil+ are not typically sold in bulk. Granted there are exceptions, like booster items such as FHC's or Erotic DVD's. Most traders live in this window because FHC's and DVDs are most commonly significantly undersold on the item market and higher leveled players buy/use them on a regular basis. This somewhat creates a LARGE profit margin for traders because those players with a ton of excess money don't really care what they're spending on these items, all they care about is that they NEED them and will buy the cheapest on the market at the time. These players are usually what funnels us traders the most income. Mainly because these guys will likely buy in bulk, and without warning too. So if you're at this point in the guide, make sure you 1) have the cheapest FHCs or DVDs in town 2) close shop once you go offline (don't get caught selling hundreds of millions in money worth of boosters and then mugged mugged 4 seconds later) and 3) Follow the trend of the trading post forums, these are where some people go to sell boosters in bulk (which is when you swoop in and "help them out").

Another good thing to buy would be to buy high-valued weapons aboard and selling them back in TC for a profit. You'll want to do some research to see which items are trending and which are not. Focus on the ones that are trending and avoid the ones that are not.

Bulk buy's are key to this step as well. A trader is always looking for the best profit margin, and with bulk buy transactions, a trader can obtain some decent profits. Things to buy in bulk would be energy cans and nerve related alcohol items. If you've got the money, buying bulk points to try and "buy the market" and then sell those points right back at a higher price could provide a small amount of profits, but the time it takes to resell the points are relatively quick. If you do it enough, you could potentially earn a lot this way. Buying the market on anything though is a risky endeavour. Be prepared to make no profit if others just undercut you time and time again. You'll want to buy the market when there isn't a whole lot of action in the points market. You can test how active the points market is by selling off 5-10 points at 1k undervalue. IF they sell QUICK, then do not waste your time with buying the market. If it takes 5-10min to sell those points or if other people try to undercut your prices, then the points market is stagnant, and the time for buying the market is ripe. If you proceed to buy the market, make sure to not over buy the points that are high in value. I try to stay at 2-5% profit margins when I buy the market for points.

Items you should try to buy are the following:
- All $1 sale items
- High valued weapons abroad (buy in other countries or 15% cheaper than at cost)
- DVD's
- FHC's
- Bulk Energy Drinks
- Bulk Points


Step 4: The "end game"
Est. time: 2 months
End goal: 1bil +

At this point, you should be able to trade in the highest of valued items. An "end-game" of sorts. Things like stat enhancers or rare items will be a large portion of your profits here. These kinds of deals come few and far between, however, so patience is a virtue to experiment with.

Stat enhancers are your bread and butter. Players will find these items in the city and will try to sell them on the forums or trade chat to a trader willing to buy. Most sellers that find these items are often not experienced with haggling and are wanting the rewards of their finds near immediately. With this in mind, traders swoop in to "help" their needs to sell the item as quickly as possible. As a trader, you will need to regulate how much you can afford to buy/sell at one time. It's possible if you've managed to bank up enough money to handle more then 1 stat enhancer at a time, but most traders try to avoid holding onto stat enhancers. Don't fall for those that mail you will "better offers". If what they offer you still fits the parameters of your "bottom line" then its worth it to haggle with them until an agreed upon price is resolved. Remember, a stored item is not a profit until its sold...and sometimes it can take months to sell your item. With Stat enhancers, be prepared to settle for a smaller profit margin. 16% of 450mil is around 62mil dollars. A lot of sellers can "swallow" that much of a loss and will likely take their business elsewhere. A typical profit margin is around 5-8%. It's also worth noting that some stat enhancers fluctuate in prices, and it's worth it to buy the item when its market value is hitting a low point. Buy low, sell high.

With a large sum of money at your disposal, buying bulk FHCs or Donator packs is another good (consistent) source of money. Don't be afraid to buy 500-600mil of FHCs at a time and slowly sell them off to the masses. Avoid doing "bulk deals" with buyers. It's better to continue to play the market while you wait to make more money off selling these items.

Once you get into the billions for a reserve profit, it doesn't hurt to try for rare or collectible staff items. These types of items are pretty much priceless and it's significantly difficult to place a price on them. A typical staff item is worth around 2bil, and most sellers know this. What i tend to do here is offer 1.5bil to the seller and walk away once they reject my "shitty" offer. As I'm walking away, I make sure to leave the negotiation on a good note by saying "I understand, let me know if you change your mind and we can haggle out a price. ;)" Almost every time, a week later they message me back saying "1.8bil" and I counter with a 1.7bil offer and they typically accept that. Its all about waiting them out. You're the one with the money, and they are the ones with a hole in the pocket. Just remember that you have more patience then they do, and you'll likely be the owner of a new staff item! What I like to do with these "staff items" once I get my hands on them is to put it in the auction house for 1.9bil....I know what i said....Auction it off and set a 30 day limit to it. No one uses the auction house anymore except for rare items. Setting it to a max of 30 days will give those "collectible" enthusiasts time to see your item up for sale. The auction house is also a good source to find rare items for cheap. I mainly use the auction house for the really expensive items, and it doesn't hurt to promote those items in the trade chat or your trading thread in the trading post.

The last thing I will mention about trading is to collect items you can trade at a moments notice. Things like Neumune Tablets are a good item to have on reserve. When a Dirty Bomb has detonated, the prices of Neumune Tablets tend to skyrocket for a short period of time.

Items you should try to buy are the following:
- All $1 sale items
- State Enhancers: Skateboards, Dumbbells, Parachutes, and Boxing gloves
- Donator packs
- Bulk FHCs
- Rare/staff items
- Work on your reserve

DONE. $1,000,000,000.

Basic Trading Terminology

• or - These symbols are used when a trader is posting something in the Trading Forums giving a brief outline of what they are asking for from other players. means the trader wants to buy a certain item (typically at a discounted price), means the trader wants to sell a certain item to people that are looking to buy.
• OBO - OBO stands for "Or Best Offer". Traders use this when they want to move something that they obtained for a relatively cheap price, and any amount of offer will provide a profit for the trader. A lot of traders will use this to their advantaged, however, because the good traders will strike up a deal with someone that's asking for offers to try and re-sell that item for a better profit later on down the road.
• "Mail me your Offers" - This is a term used by new-comers when they don't fully understand how much their item is worth or they simply don't have time to research. The items sold like this are typically high-valued items, and traders love/hate these people. Traders love them because typically (60% of the time) they can pay WAY under market value for an item to take advantage of the "in-experienced" traders. Traders also HATE these types of people because what the seller is actually looking for is a better understanding of how much an item is worth. To them, its a sloppy way of doing research for their unknown item. Most traders will likely not negotiate with you, later on, so be careful if you chose to do your research. It can cause issues for some people. I've added people to my ignore list because of this before, and I'm sure people have added me to theirs.
• Profit Margin - A traders "bottom-line" of how much profit they want to earn per item bought. Its up to the trader how much of a profit margin they want to set for themselves. This profit margin is also referred too as a "mark up" but more importantly refers to how a transaction will provide income for the trader.
• Mark Up - A traders "added" fee to buying cheap and selling the item at a higher price. This is a traders main source of income.
• Sweet 16 - Most traders strive for a 16% mark up when they go to re-sell their items. In some cases, a trade will require the trader to accept a lower % of their mark up in order for them to make the deal work.
• At "Cost" - Traders tend to avoid paying for things "at cost" because that means the trader is willing to pay for an item at a price they intend to sell the item for. This turns ZERO profit, and its recommended that no Trader practices this. There are exceptions, however. For example, if the trader is trying to Buy the market (another term below), then they wouldn't be hurting as long as it still turns a profit.
• Buying the Market - Is when the trader is buying up all the stock of a certain item at a lower price with intentions to "inflate" that items market value by selling off their stock at a higher price. This is rarely ever seen by traders mainly because of its huge risk factor, but in some instances, it can prove to be highly effective. The most common item traders tend to buy the market on are points. Mainly because it's easy and relays a quick profit if the market is stagnant.
• Haggling - Means to negotiate and agree upon a price after some persistently made offers and counter-offers were exchanged. Some traders describe their haggling skills as an art but never want to boast about it due to others feeling like their being taken advantage of. It is a skill to some extent to haggle with someone, and in most cases, you have to be willing to walk away if the seller won't hit your "bottom-line".
• Bottom-Line - The lowest price you'll sell something for. And visa-versa, the highest price you'll buy something for. Traders have a set "profit margin" on a lot of their common items they trade for, all of these profit margins have a "bottom-line" to them and are used persistently by traders.
• MV - means "Market Value".
• Market Value - The fluctuation of how much an item is worth on the item market. It is very important to watch how the market value does for items that you typically try and follow. This is where keeping an excel sheet available
• Market Spike - A huge increase in value on an item due to outside sources. You will see market spikes on certain items when an update rolls out that positively effects
• Reserve Stock - This term is used for the Elite Traders that have some extra cash on hand that can constantly hold a certain amount of items on them in case an event or Market Spike occurs. The most common example of this would be stocking up on is Neumune Tablets until a Dirty Bomb is detonated and selling off these tablets to the players that are affected at a higher than normal price. Some of the very best traders practice this, but you have to seriously invest a lot of time and effort into getting to the point of wasting money on reserve stock. If you can afford this, it's a guaranteed profit if/when the right time approaches.
• High/Low Saturation Value - A term used to describe an item's market value with respect to how many items are on the market. Supply and demand takes over,
• Runners - a player recruited by a Trader to obtain a certain item from overseas. A Trader's dream would be to get a ton of runners for them and obtain cheap items from overseas and sell to them to the trader for cheaper than market value so the trader can turn a profit on the items once they sell on the item market. Traders typically recruit this "runners" from their faction/friends, but can also get
• A Proxy - a term used to avoid being mugged. A trader that struggles to trade high-valued items without getting mugged afterward will sometimes use a "proxy" player to sell their items for them. These proxy players should be trusted friends/faction players with a large amount of stats to hopefully defend from any incoming attacks after a quick snipe. Typically traders will pay their "partner" a thank you fee, but deals are often made from this standpoint. Such as the trader "deals" to make some runs for the proxy.
• Sniping - This is more of a term that belongs in the mugging section, but seeing how it relates heavily to trading, I will add it here as well. Sniping is when a mugger finds a target that is trying to trade a high-valued item or a large volume of items and buys them all up then proceeds to try and mug a portion of their money back.
• Turtling - This is a defensive strategy that some Traders are forced to practice because of what they would be selling could be sniped by muggers. When a trader is turtling, they will either "hosp" themselves on a strong player and then proceed to try and make a deal with a player. This will prevent the mugger from mugging their earnings right after the transaction was completed.
• Autoregressive - A form of Market Spike, but this one is a randomly determined process used in statistical calculations in which future values are estimated based on a weighted sum of past values. An autoregressive process operates under the premise that past values have an effect on current values. As a trader, you always are trying to look for a way to get the most out of the market. If you're able to chart how items are doing with respect to value, then you can somewhat autoregressively look at what might happen next. A Perfect example of this would be the Hazmat Suits or Cesium. Once a certain saturation level cleared off with cesium, it made their prices go up (supply and demand). Traders took advantage of this and raised the pricing on the hazmat suits by nearly 600% increase. A year ago, Hazmat suits were selling for around 500mil a piece. But ever since the great DB drop of 2014 (3 DB's were dropped within the same week which resulted in 300 cesium taken out of the market), cesium skyrocketed and so did the hazmat suits (since its a related item), and now they can be worth close to 3 billion apiece.
• Throwback - A price that dips below a price pattern or trendline. The retreat toward the level of the breakout is not uncommon and is used by many traders to confirm the validity of the new momentum.
• Price Pattern / Trendline - is basically an attempt to find order in the sometimes seemingly random movement of price. Swings of high and low creating an almost "candlestick" look to a charted item that "averages" out the medium of the item's market value. The candlestick and price patterns are important tools for analyzing price action since they help traders visualize of price movement. Candlestick patterns such as the fluctuation value for a flamethrower is a good example of visually interpreted price action. See image below for an example of this. You want to invest in items that have a positive trendline and avoid the ones that have negative trendline's.

[image: s3.amazonaws.com]

• Market Trend - Is when the value of an item skyrockets or plummets due to outside interference other than typical market progressions. For instance, when Ched rolled out the most recent medical update, morphine was staying at a constant state of around $16,000 a piece. Since the update rolled out and made morphine give your character "life", the price of the morphine has skyrocketed to nearly $30,000 a piece. This "outside" source created a trend for players to jump on and sell off their unwanted morphine for a huge profit. Since the players jumped on this trend of selling off their unwanted morphine. With so much market saturation on the market due to this update, it makes it hard for traders to make a profit due to little to no fluctuation in value. If you look at the value of morphine, you'll notice where some traders tried to "buy the market", but the value very quickly reverted back to the original pricing prior to the trader attempting to buy the market.
• Trending - When an item's value shows a steady increase in value. Traders love these items and will often want to invest heavily on these types of items whenever they can.
• Market Progression - Is when the market value of an item rarely fluctuates but stays in a constant flow of "progression", whether that be a negative or positive progression.
• Bulk - Traders tend to buy items in "bulk" when they want to obtain a discount from the seller due to them buying a lot of stock all at once. Serious traders buying in bulk, they never sell in bulk. The only reason a trader sells in bulk is because they need the money from the sale to pay for something else.
• Turn a Profit - This is when a trader buys an item for cheaper then they would sell it for, essentially flipping the item to make a fast profit on it. Bricks are the best thing to flip in the game. Unfortunately, bricks are not worth a lot, but with a large volume, it could prove beneficial. Their flipped value is a 10,000% increase if you buy them from the city store.
• Volume - A trader invests a lot of money in an item that turns a small profit individually, but in large quantities, the profits are off the charts. IE: 100 bricks a day generates a free $49,500 profit. But save up 10,000 bricks (over 100 days of buying bricks) and you made a $4,950,000 in profits.
• Undercutting - Is when a trader sacrifices a portion of their profit margin in order to obtain business over a rival trader.
• Bidding War - A trader's worse nightmare. If you're ever caught in a bidding war with another trader, make sure you set yourself a bottom line to not exceed in regards to your profit margins. I personally refuse to participate in bidding wars for cheaper items (items under $100mil in value), but find it necessary to participate in more expensive items if there is a war going on. Just depends on how much I think I can make off the item in question. 5% profit margins are low, but on an expensive item that's worth a billion dollars, that's still a 50mil profit. 5% on an FHC is only 700k, that is not worth it to me...Again, it's all dependent on the trader. I'm at a point in my TC trading career where I don't need to mess with FHCs, but there are others that making millions off this.

Your Thoughts?

I want to know your experience/opinions in a response below! Can you answer one of the following questions for me?

- What is your most common question after reading this guide? I'm not saying I'm a trading guru, but I know my way around for sure.
- Would you like to see other guides from me? I make them all the time, but typically just for my faction.
- Whats the most common thing that you tend to sell? For me, it's cesium. I'm interested to see what others tend to favorite in selling!
- Whats the biggest loss you've encountered while trading? I lost 180mil on buying dual hammers. I made the mistake of buying WAY over cost price for them and reaped the consequences. Took me almost a 6 months to sell them; in fact, I added them to a trade to help a seller sell me a staff item haha.
- Do you prefer to sell in your bazaar or through player trades? Or auction?! I like the personal interaction with player trades, it helps me track what I sell a little easier, but that's just me!

Thanks for those of you who read the whole thing! I know its a big one. haha


~Jorgy



Words: 6775

Very interesting (if not long) post.

Personally, not sure I agree with the 100% collection route or that flowers are the most profitably way to do it. But each to their own.

Also, when I used to travel (a lot) to make a profit (I used to clear $20mill a week) I also factored in the loss of nerve & energy as well. Plus, the cost of renting a PI to enable me to get those lower travel times (these need to be reflected in any end profit figure).

as said above very interesting but there is a big risk of getting mugged unless your those people who are on tc all the time and in regards to buying and selling edvds i find that people are not willing to sell their edvds cheap anymore because there are too many traders[image: cdncache-a.akamaihd.net] and they can get a better price elsewhere

Edit You also havent taken into consideration that flowers arent always in stock but R+ anyway for an excellent guide

R+ Interesting guide

I forgot to add in renting a PI costs, that is very important to note for sure! I will update my guide once I get home! :D Thanks for the tip

And like you said, every trader will favor their own way of making money. You might not find the collectibles as a profitable venue, but to some its a very profitable way of making money! I was trying to hit "many" ways of making money, so to some, they'll likely avoid this type of gameplay, but I wanted to make sure to include this as an "option" to explore.

Thanks for the rate and comment!

I mentioned strategies in my guide about "avoiding" these muggers from sniping your money. Here are a few: 1) Close your bazaar when you go offline 2) when your selling a high valued item, slut yourself against a strong opponent, putting you in the hospital 3) (not in the guide, but will add this one for sure!) Get one of your friends to "mug" you when you have $0 on hand. This may be an unconventional method of getting around muggers, but if you get mugged in consistent fashion, the muggers wont be able to find anything on hand due to your friend mugging you previously. Its also good to note that you have about 2-4 hours from your friends mug to make a trade, after that mugging chances are greatly increased and lastly 4) use a Proxy player to do your trading for you. If you have a trusted friend with a high amount of stats, use them to help make a deal. I've proxy'd many deals in the past for traders since I have a decent amount of stats. This method is still somewhat risky because there is always going to be someone better then you (or your friend), so its good practice to look at the buyers personal stats page to see if they would put up a fight against your proxy, if your not sure, try options 1-3 instead of using a proxy.

You mentioned about how I didn't take into consideration that flowers might be out of stock; to that comment I will refer you to the following quote in my guide:

"Knowledge is power. Before leaving TC to travel and buy cheap items abroad, check with the travelrun website and see how prices are doing. Some traders/runners use this website religiously and update it on an hourly basis. Its a good tool to use when planning your next trip to see whats "in stock" and how much prices are (since drug prices fluctuate constantly). Another tool you can utilize is the IRC channel #DrugDen. This channel is kind of a large channel for traders to meet up and help each other out in regards to running for items abroad.
Drugs: http://travelrun.torncentral.com/drugs.php
Flowers: http://travelrun.torncentral.com/flowers.php
All Items: http://travelrun.torncentral.com/itemall.php"

I mentioned, but when i go to update the guide later tonight, I will add a note that displays in the "flower running" section to check for stock before you leave! Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Let me know if you find anything else in the guide you think is debatable! :D

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Jk, Good guide but abit too long. Maybe a summary/tldr etc.

I could do that, I just wanted it to be as in-depth as possible for anyone that seriously wants to get into the trading business.

I'll edit it once I make a tldr section ;)

I dont know why people dont like to read in a text based game... But i like this. Great post. :)

Rated.

As a trader myself it was a very good post. One key point you said and when people ask me how I did so well, timing really is everything. And being able to know what is coming trend wise. Like when the companies changed and you could no longer get cans from sweet shops (with the specials changed) the market slumped.

A good time to buy them up and hold onto for them to rise again.

However, it does seem there are so many people trading now days ;) (Maybe a huge influx of new players who knows lol)

R+ just because of the time you spent on it...

People that post these threads dont understand the idea of competition. The more people know about this kind of stuff, the less money everyone makes

Haha, yeah I think i spent about a bil just on cans for that moment alone. Currently waiting on this as well. Maybe things will change, maybe they wont, but being prepared is always a good thing!

Competition means competitive pricing my friend. The more people there are, the better deals you can get when going to buy stuff!

A good trader will find a way to make their profit. ;)

those "flight/day" numbers are a touch impossible lol, certainly if you want sleep at any rate

R+

Haha, I followed this timing back when i traveled a ton.

When i wanted to sleep, I traveled to SA ;)

Still was annoying to wake up from an alarm to buy flowers/travel back/ and go back to bed, but i did that for almost a month straight lol

Burnt me out pretty quick, but its possible.

Beautiful guide. Thanks a lot for the effort. I very much appreciate.

I read all through and I have urge to go and trade and make amazing profit. I haven't made big loss yet myself, since I'm new in this game. I think I have been lucky mostly finding those trades that literally make me rich.

I use bazaar and auction and person to person to make cash. Most common items I trade with is flowers and plushies and lately I try to start with cans also.

Anyway, waiting for more guides.

Yes! Those are all good things! And I hope you never have to run into a bad deal (those are just the worse...lol)

I will pump out more guides when I get the time. I just moved to a new house last week, and I'm still getting things set up. so time is somewhat limited for me. Only been able to play TC on mobile these last few days lol

I have a lot started, just wanting to make them perfect before publishing them. I use my faction as a test drive. See how they react first. If its good and I have no errors or if they want to add stuff too it, I'll edit it and then publish it.

i really enjoyed this guide
its simple but not especially easy
but as u said its quite possible if a person spends the time to educate themselves and then watch for market trends
and that does require some patience

since i already flower and xan run im going to add xtc as well, i never really considered that drug
probably be best to have your own PI as u could use the vault, while renting you would need to use other strategies
to "hide" your money,

Over all a great very useful guide
i know i definitely will be subscribing and coming back to refer back from time to time

thanks again

I didnt think about that when renting a PI. Thanks for your input!

And I'm glad you enjoyed the guide! I'll be posting up more guides on how to make more money soon. I think the next one i wanna publish is my mugging guide, then possibly a trading stock guide, after that a guide on how to make money doing "odd jobs". lol a misc section so to speak. xD

did not read the first look of it. very long. sorry. But definitively gonna read it in the near future since i'm still a noob. Thanks for sharing OP.