Trading calculations...help

[OamodSias]

Had a brief look, but couldn't find a thread to post this question in.

This is more for the trading guru's, those of you who take your trading seriously and like to fiddle with the numbers to maximise profit, make predictions about hauls etc.

After trying bounty hunting (good fun), I found that I enjoy trading the most and I'm thinking of a) starting my own little "trading co." RP for in my brains ( picture: ETS2 if you've played it ) ; and writing a small application that will let me log all this information and do the correct calculations and everything (alongside saving "trade runs" with profit/loss details so I can return to other runs later if I want).

Ship: Cobra MkIII, kitted for 60t runs, busy saving up for A-classes, a lot of D-classes.

I found a nice little spot to do some trading. It's only two systems at the moment, 4ly apart, and each one is less than 100ls from the sequence, it's about 4min one way from Launch to Dock.
I'm trying to calculate the cr/ton amounts, and cr/ton/hour amounts and I truly suck at maths.

Calculations:

• cost per load: cost per ton * qty
• buy per load: buy per ton * qty
• profit/loss per ton: buy per ton - cost per ton
• profit/loss per load: profit/loss per ton * qty
• credits per ton per hour: (60/time taken) * profit/loss per ton
• credits per load per hour: credits per ton per hour * qty

My trading table ('scuse the messy layout, can't get the table feature to work right, this is c/p straight from Excel), based on my above calculations, are the below figures accurate? Am I missing something?

commod	cost per ton	qty	cost per load	buy per ton	qty	buy per load	profit/loss per ton	profit/loss per load	time taken	credits per ton per hour	credits per load per hour
Power Generators	370	60	22200	531	60	31860	161	9660	3.49	2,768	166,074
Semiconductors	784	60	47040	1163	60	69780	379	22740	3.34	6,808	408,503

Any input you guys can give me would be appreciated; including your own calculations if you're willing share your trade secrets.

 

[Emanon]

You could get really not picky like I do on my spreadsheet and track seconds (I stopwatch time it) to help factor in the credits per hour as well as fuel cost deduction. The fuel costs end up being pretty minimal, but I still track it because sometimes it's better to buy fuel than to take the time to scoop if u want the faster trips.

 

[OamodSias]

You could get really not picky like I do on my spreadsheet and track seconds (I stopwatch time it) to help factor in the credits per hour as well as fuel cost deduction. The fuel costs end up being pretty minimal, but I still track it because sometimes it's better to buy fuel than to take the time to scoop if u want the faster trips.

I use the stopwatch on my phone, lol - I like to know exactly what my estimated profit will be per run/per hour etc.

 

[CMDR Beltane]

With such calculations i will start at the time it feels worthwhile to me. Right the only thing i calculate is the aprox. cr / ton / h between two routes or different wares on the same route and the risk. I rarely trade Imp-Slaves for example, as the average profit you get from trading those can be achieved with other ressources without the need to invest the same amount of creds. At the time we have at least a trading system like it was in the X series, were all kinds of stuff were valid to be traded, simply because my cargo hold could hold more meat compared to ore, i will start running some deeper calculations. Right now, anything below 4 - 5 K buy price is just a filler if nothing else is avaiable or in case you dont have the amount of creds yet to go for full cargo holds of the more expensive stuff.