The guidelines governing the market in TEST systems are set forth by your friendly neighborhood diplomats in order to keep the alliance’s economy strong and healthy, and at the same time keeping us well-supplied for the inevitable military conflicts that arise. In specific, the aims are:

1. Keep the markets stocked.
2. Encourage importation of goods for all manner of needs.
3. Foster the growth of localized industry.
4. Protect our supply chains from hostile interdiction.
5. Provide clarity to people using the market about what’s appropriate behavior, and what isn’t.
6. Give some insight as to the difference between “bluefucking” (which can result in punishment), “less than bro-ish actions” (which are not punishable per se, but more of the “not cool” side of things), “well-intentioned-but-actually-very-unhelpful” things, and the “while-seemingly-bad-actually-healthy-for-the-market” actions.
7. Prevent the diplomats in TEST from pulling their hair out, or spending time acting as forensic accountants.

As always, there are grey areas and edge cases to everything; we are attempting here to provide a set of guidelines that communicate the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve.

Understanding how the market works in Eve is necessary to frame any discussion. A few points follow here, which are listed specifically as various diplomats have had to repeat themselves many times.

First and foremost, markets are public. Anyone, with or without docking rights, can access and trade on the market in any region. In many cases, if they know enough about TEST they’re even able to get their stuff out of a station without having even a character in alliance.

Secondly, it’s impossible to buy, or sell, from specific orders. Eve will default to the most advantageously priced order, but will pay that person based on your less advantageous order.

A perfect example is a market with several sell orders listed, say, one at 5,000 ISK and the other at 50,000 ISK. Say you’re feeling particularly self-righteous about marketeering (maybe you just finished reading some Marx or burning copies of Atlas Shrugged) and you decide “Hey, I’m going to buy off this bluefucking 50,000 order and make a madpost on the forums about how much of a dick this person is.” You click on the high-priced order and purchase one unit. 50,000 ISK is deducted from your wallet, and a TEST member’s name pops up in your transaction history. You then madpost about it.

The problem is, you’re actually the chucklefuck in this story. What Eve did was take your 50,000 ISK and give it to the reasonably priced importer who listed at 5,000. You just made his day, and you are not any closer to finding out who’s being decidedly un-bro-ish with their sell orders.

Please bear these facts in mind when considering your market actions.

• In general, prices in nullsec are going to be higher than in empire space. You should be prepared to pay anywhere from 10-30% more for your items.

• Pricing of sell orders is at the discretion of the importer/builder. If you dislike the prices, import/build your own stuff and undercut them.

• Conversely, pricing of standing buy orders is at the discretion of the buyer. Opportunistic purchase orders are a fine way to make ISK off folks who need cash quickly, and perhaps even AFK neutrals seeking to firesale stuck assets. It’s also a great way for an importer to protect their markets.

• There is no “true price.” While moving the market in Jita for say, tritanium would be extremely difficult, there are members of TEST, and friends of TEST members, who have the capital to dislocate markets in Jita at will. This means that whatever something is going for in Jita might have little to do with the pricing situation a few days ago. That said, for many things it’s a very decent representation of an equilibrium price, so absent obvious distortion it’ll be used to frame discussions.

When the rubber meets the road and hostile forces descend upon us, supply is the most important part of the market. Having things available when it’s time for a fleet allows those of us perhaps less abundant in the gift of foresight, to participate in ops. Protecting supply can be accomplished to a certain degree, by the following:

• Preventing trade hub arbitrage. This is the prime argument against “white knighting” markets. If you list items such that purchasing them and moving them to Jita will result in a profit, someone will scoop them and ship them out. It might be a person in TEST, or it might be a neutral party. This sort of thing is often undetectable (or at least, not easily detectable), and the person doing the purchasing frankly doesn’t know if it’s a neutral party fireselling stuck assets (in which scooping and turning a profit is great), or a would-be do-gooder that hasn’t really thought things out or bothered to read a certain incredibly helpful wiki article.

• Bringing things to market. Either through importing or building locally, tossing stuff up on the market is the Lord’s work. It’s also a fair amount of work, and as such should be appropriately compensated. People may love to pitchfork “market jews” and complain about pricing, but the face remains that without them, you'd have to import, for yourself, everything you use. This would lead to asset bloat, and make (may it never happen) an emergency evacuation particularly painful and expensive. Yes, marketeers make money doing what they do. They also have a phenomenal amount of wealth tied up in a risky nullsec outpost. When you get to relatively moonwalk out to another home, they are left to fret about the stuff they listed for your convenience. So, let's try to walk a mile in different pairs of spaceshoes now and then, k?

• Bringing things away from the market. Few things land you an entry-level position in the NPC corp faster than getting caught depopulating the market of other people's assets. Removing assets from our space and hoarding them maliciously, or shipping them out for profit, will not be tolerated. This obviously excludes buyback services, which provide important sources of liquid ISK and encourage people to use our space.

When you're about to perform a market action that you think might be questionable, please ask yourself the following questions if none of the above has been of help to you:

• Is this going to remove something useful from the market in our staging system? If you're not buying for personal consumption, you're about to do something bad.
• Is this going to distort our market or leave us open to interdiction by neutrals and outright hostile forces?
• If I'm selling at a low price, am I willing to continue to do this indefinitely? If not, please consider setting your price high enough that you would!
• If what I was about to do became completely public, would a well-informed reader of this article think I'm an asshole?
• As a marketeer, am I watching someone undercutting me and confusing stiff competition with someone doing something stupid and white knight-ey? Before bemoaning someone's overly low pricing, watch them for a bit. If they refresh their orders all the time, you've been out-competed and should probably move on.
• I'm super mad about something. Have I consulted more sources to justify my anger than a quick glance at Eve-Central?
• Could my problem be solved with simple actions on my part?

After feedback and more debate, we have decided to remove the original “rules” section of this article and instead replace it with a few examples of behavior we would like to not see. The only “Rule” as such for TEST markets is “Don’t Be a Dick” and individual incidents will be judged by diplomats on a case-by-case basis as they always have been. These cases are not rules, nor are they applicable to every related case.

• Person A buys out all the hulls and components for a skirmish doctrine from the U-H market, assembles them and puts them on contract for a 40% markup (80% over jita) There are no longer hulls or some modules necessary for people to fit their own instead of buying the contract ones. He also buys the few reasonably priced (20% over jita) contracts and re-lists them.
• * TAB –> Although providing fitted ships on contract is a respectable service that deserves a markup, it doesn't when it's at the cost of choice. If he had imported ships to put up on contract, that would have been fine. If he had bought out half of the ships and put them up for a reasonable margin, that would have been fine too. But when you intentionally remove the choice from TEST members and force them to pay you more or not have a ship, you're gonna have a bad time.
• Person B buys out all of the contracts for a skirmish doctrine, and relists them 10% higher.
• * TAB –> You are not providing a service nor a convenience, you are literally just taking money from consumers and putting it in your pocket and you're gonna have a bad time.
• Person C buys out all of the Faction Ammo before a scheduled stratop and re-lists it at 1000% markup.
• * TAB –> You fucked with a military operation for personal gain, you're gonna have a bad time.
• Person D is upset that a particular t1 hull is priced 20% over jita. Instead of importing or manufacturing some and selling them at 10%-15%, he imports some at a loss and sells them at or below jita+import cost. He believes he is doing a service to the alliance by providing cheap goods for purchase.
• * TAB –> In reality he is not going to keep up this volume at a loss, and the importers that are making a small profit stop importing. The end result is that you now have an empty market and you're gonna have a bad time. In this instance, buying out the items at jita cost and re-listing them at a reasonable margin is an acceptable practice and is healthy for the market.