How to read the item card

The item card is all the analytics for one line on a single screen: prices and spread, the “Signals” panel (13 metrics), order-book depth, the cross-hub comparison, your orders and the price chart. We walk through each block, read one full card as a worked example, and turn it into an entry checklist.

What does the card header show?

At the top — the current best buy, best sell and the spread between them in the selected hub. It’s the starting point: the spread caps what you can hope for at all, and fees then trim it down to real margin.

The “Signals” panel

Here’s the full metric set from the latest snapshot: “ISK/day” (realistic profit), “Margin” (spread net of fees), “vs fair” (deviation from model), “Volatility” (daily price σ), “Spread”, “Turnover/day” (ISK), “Volume/day” (units), “Competition” (orders in the buy/sell band), “Churn”, “Refill”, “Persistence” and “Days inv”.

Read them in groups, not one by one. Liquidity — turnover, volume, days of inventory. Risk — volatility and spread persistence. Competition — how many orders are nearby, how often the best one changes (churn) and how fast the book restocks (refill). The value colour hints whether it’s good or worrying.

How does order-book depth affect your margin?

The depth block shows how much stock stands on each side and at which price levels. Thin depth near the spread means your size will move the price and the “paper” margin will evaporate. Thick, even depth signals a market that swallows your trade without moving.

A practical rule: size your quantity against the depth at the spread. Want to buy 100 units while the first band of buy orders holds 12 — the other 88 you take at worse prices, and your average entry creeps up. In illiquid stock the depth at the spread is almost always thin, which is exactly where the “paper” margin evaporates on real size.

Cross-hub and “My orders”

Cross-hub compares this item’s price across all five hubs at once — a direct arbitrage hint: you see where it’s cheaper to buy and dearer to sell. If the gap is worth a haul, head to the Arbitrage section, where it’s computed by hauler and trade mode.

The “My orders” block (for logged-in users) shows your standing buy and sell orders on this exact item: where you sit in the queue and whether you’ve been undercut. That closes the loop — the analytics and your real position in the book on one screen.

What does the price chart tell you?

The price history over the period (up to 90 days) with the fair-value line reveals the item’s character: a calm corridor, a trend or a sawtooth. It shows whether the price has been at the current level before and how fast it returned to normal — exactly the context for the “cheap or not” call.

Example: reading a full card

Open a module. Header: buy 9.2M, sell 9.8M, spread 6.1%. Signals panel: “Margin” 2.4% — the spread barely survives fees, at zero skills that’s nearly nothing. “vs fair” −3% (a touch below normal), low “Volatility”, healthy “Turnover/day”, “Days inv” 2, high “Competition”, high “Churn”. Depth at the spread is medium.

The verdict assembles itself: liquid and calm (you’ll get out), but the margin is thin while competition and churn are high — you’ll fight for the top spot and re-price often, and relist fees eat the rest. For a newcomer without trained Accounting/Broker Relations it’s a pass; for a skilled trader on volume it’s a workable but low-margin line. One green number would have misled here; the full card shows the whole picture.

The card as an entry checklist

Boil the read down to four questions — and the card answers all of them on one screen. Does the spread survive fees (look at “Margin”, not “Spread”)? Is there enough liquidity to exit (turnover, volume, days of inventory)? Is the item calm (volatility, persistence)? Is it not dear right now (vs fair)? Four yeses — an entry candidate. If running the checklist by hand on every line is too much, “What to buy” does exactly this for you and hands back a pre-filtered list, while Market gives the same metrics as columns for manual picking.