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, order-book depth, the cross-hub comparison, your orders and the price chart. We walk through each block.

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.

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.