Author: riser
I am riser. I think of myself as a successful trader. I don’t know exactly what other people think of me but many think I had another identity before. I have been asked ever since I got my first top-10 spot in my third trading period if I was XXX where XXX was the name of an older player I had never heard of but was probably successful; As if anyone getting a top-10 spot required to have years of experience.
The most frequent person suggested is Andoversr. I don’t know what to think of it, I actually met that guy. He was in Cashington when I emigrated here. He was probably the most successful citizen of Cashington, having bought almost all of main street and reselling it for the max price and stealing so much stuff from people it was crazy. He then promptly hit people for the fun of it until he became bankrupted. I don’t think he lasted until day 2. I hope it was to preserve pm days or because he wanted to have fun otherwise I’m not sure if I want this to be my secret personality… Andoversr, if you read this, I have nothing against you. I just found you behavior very weird…
What is weirder is that people assume you can’t learn trading in the Federation “quickly”, as if weeks or months was “quick”. All of you who can drive a car probably learned in much less time then I spent here in my first trading period…
I finished my spreadsheet during my first week. Ever since, I have been able to calculate exactly how much it costs to make a product when you are skilled and when you are unskilled for any combination of skills. Simply by updating the street price of the products, I can see how those changes affect the products I want to make. I’ve used this to calculate how much money each product can be expected to make and how to best optimize this.
Why? Because I’m a math boy, I like to solve hard problems. Trying to calculate just how many pieces of wood are used in the production of a computer is a job for a madman but I find doing this fun. Add lots of free time to think about trading in the federation (a little less than 2 hours of bike commuting each day all summer until the end of October gave me this time) and you’ll have everything you need to find a few good solutions.
Except for products (not enough skill points per trading period), I tried pretty much all the ways to make money including but not limited to taxis, harbors, stock market, ship building, ship sailing, reselling road lots, making cars unskilled, trying to do too many products at once to crowd out competitors and many more. Some of my friends whom I spoke to at first laughed at all my crazy ideas. Most of those ideas were unsuccessful but all of them taught me more about trading here. So I got those top-10 positions because I tried to do things and lost tons of money. That’s right, without all those mistakes, I would have made even more money and scored higher. But without all those mistakes and experience, I would not have won a round.
So, how does one become a successful trader?
– calculate your cost to the nearest 0.01 ish.
– learn the in and out of trading. Try to learn as much as you can each round and try to think how to improve yourself based on what you know. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, that’s how you learn.
– trade in all cities
– be a premium member
– make shops big enough that you never come back to find it empty, otherwise, you lost sales
– work hard to keep those shops filled
– be socially active
The last one may be the most ignored part of success by new traders. You can’t be truly successful without being socially active. Not until you have a reputation anyway. Unless you are lucky enough to have no competitor, you must make deals with your clients; you must be a friend to them. This is what makes them choose your products instead of your competitor’s if both are the same price. And if you start a price war in which every hour you lower your price if you are not the lowest, very soon you will make no profit at all. I’m not saying not to lower the price; I’m saying it must not be your only tactic.
“I didn’t sell a single wood during the last hour and I’m cheaper than riser. Why don’t you buy my wood?” I remember a small trader saying in the chat on the first day of the last trading period. During that same hour, I had sold more than 5000 units of wood. Why? Because with that 10% discount, for those truly important traders I was cheaper. Because my clients knew that I would still be there 61 lots later. Because my clients knew I would refill that 120 squst shop I was building fifty times a day because I was addicted and I would be there every day up to the last day so they would not have to fear having just one active wood trader. Because we were friends.
Can anyone achieve success? Yes! Of course!
Will everyone put all the efforts that goes into being a top trader? No. That is why some citizens will be not be top trader even once.
Now that I have achieved my goal – to be Captain of Industry before the end of the year, 5 trading periods- you won’t see me being that crazy again on every trading period… it’s just too much work.
I can only hope one day some highly successful newbie will be asked: “Hey! Are you riser?”