Trading and making a profit.

[davespil]

I have a question about trading. When I'm selling to a town/city/caravan how do I know what the good deals are? I have the Whole Seller perk and prices show up as green, yellow, and red on both sides of the trade window. Does green on my side mean I should sell that product to them? And yellow/red mean that I shouldn't? What if some of their products are green? Do I buy those? And avoid buying red/yellow?

Also, is it better to sell to caravans and buy from towns like I've been told? Or do I just buy and sell the green stuff regardless of where I'm at?

I haven't been able to get a good answer to this question yet and any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sabatonsky]

Yes. Green means profitable if you sell them. and Red means unprofitable if you sell them. dunno about yellow and when you buy them. but its basically this:
During selling: Green very good, yellow moderate good, red: ya gonna loose money if you sell
During buying: Green is buy now, yellow moderate, red: overpaying....
At least thats how i understand it

 

[VaerShyr]

What sabatonsky posted is half right. Buy when it's green, sell when it's red. If you notice, green price amounts are always low, while red prices are always high. So if you buy it when it's green, that means you're paying less than what it's "normally" at, normal being that yellow / orange-ish color. Red prices mean they're higher at that place than the market average, meaning you should sell it there. I can't speak confidently about the whole seller perk, but if you hover over the item the money amount shows up with those colors, and that's how you should decide where to sell / buy. Horses and livestock don't have those colors applied for some reason, so you just have to remember what you paid and try to sell at higher amounts.

 

[Mik1306]

This is how i mainly make my money, eventually you get a feel for what sells well where, what buys cheap from where, and what a good price for an item is.

Until then, the wholeseller perk just tells you if you're in profit on that item, green means profit red means loss. It doesn't work if you load a save though i guess it doesn't save what you bought the thing for. At first i prefer to go to a couple towns close to each other and use the trade runors thing to buy cheap and sell higher.

Later you get the third perk, can't remember the name, which marks items as green or red in the trade window based on whether they're less or more expensive to buy than the average, it gets easier then since you can just rock up in a town, buy whatever's low and sell whatever's high and move on.

2 things as an aside:
1) Mules are great for carrying capacity, they're worth investing in.
2)Getting your movement speed up is well worth it.

 

[Mik1306]

If you want a hint, you can usually get linen for 25ish, fur for 30ish, and hides for 30-40ish in balgard. Then sell them down in poros/zeronica for 100 each (sometimes).

 

[davespil]

What sabatonsky posted is half right. Buy when it's green, sell when it's red. If you notice, green price amounts are always low, while red prices are always high. So if you buy it when it's green, that means you're paying less than what it's "normally" at, normal being that yellow / orange-ish color. Red prices mean they're higher at that place than the market average, meaning you should sell it there. I can't speak confidently about the whole seller perk, but if you hover over the item the money amount shows up with those colors, and that's how you should decide where to sell / buy. Horses and livestock don't have those colors applied for some reason, so you just have to remember what you paid and try to sell at higher amounts.

"Buy when it's green, sell when it's red." Buy it when it's green on the seller's side? Or my side? Sell it if it's red on they're side or my side? That's the part no one ever tells me. Let me be very specific so I get a precise answer:

When it's green on my side does that mean I sell it? And if it's red on my side does that mean I don't sell it? When it's green on the sellers side do I buy it or sell it? When it's red on the seller's side do I buy it or sell it?

Please answer the above questions to make the answer clear. Too many people just say buy when it's green, but don't say green on which side.

Thank you.

 

[Maximum997]

"Buy when it's green, sell when it's red." Buy it when it's green on the seller's side? Or my side? Sell it if it's red on they're side or my side? That's the part no one ever tells me. Let me be very specific so I get a precise answer:

When it's green on my side does that mean I sell it? And if it's red on my side does that mean I don't sell it? When it's green on the sellers side do I buy it or sell it? When it's red on the seller's side do I buy it or sell it?

Please answer the above questions to make the answer clear. Too many people just say buy when it's green, but don't say green on which side.

Thank you.

Best trade goods in the game are horses. They cost a lot, they have good margin But for some reason they dont improve trade skill anymore.

Buy desert horses - about 200
And Aserai horses - about 2000
In Askar Iyakis and sell them to western\nothern cities.

 

[Sieben]

"Buy when it's green, sell when it's red." Buy it when it's green on the seller's side? Or my side? Sell it if it's red on they're side or my side? That's the part no one ever tells me. Let me be very specific so I get a precise answer:

When it's green on my side does that mean I sell it? And if it's red on my side does that mean I don't sell it? When it's green on the sellers side do I buy it or sell it? When it's red on the seller's side do I buy it or sell it?

Please answer the above questions to make the answer clear. Too many people just say buy when it's green, but don't say green on which side.

Thank you.

Green on your side means you'll make a good price. Green on town side it's cheap to buy.

Red on your side means you'll make a loss. Red on town side it's overpriced.

 

[davespil]

Green on your side means you'll make a good price. Green on town side it's cheap to buy.

Red on your side means you'll make a loss. Red on town side it's overpriced.

Thanks man!

 

[Kargamusha]

I have a question about trading. When I'm selling to a town/city/caravan how do I know what the good deals are? I have the Whole Seller perk and prices show up as green, yellow, and red on both sides of the trade window. Does green on my side mean I should sell that product to them? And yellow/red mean that I shouldn't? What if some of their products are green? Do I buy those? And avoid buying red/yellow?

Also, is it better to sell to caravans and buy from towns like I've been told? Or do I just buy and sell the green stuff regardless of where I'm at?

I haven't been able to get a good answer to this question yet and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Your confusion is justified, to remedy it Calabria is in need of some new economists.

Bannerlord 2 needs to overhaul the Trade page,; the problem is the word “Value”. This
Term is used in both the Right Hand (RH) and LH columns. It is an established bad practice in general to have two column in a spread sheet with the same name. It depicts a structural problem namely that the subject matter is not understood.
Yup ...Confusion reigns .... & that’s the current Trading page.

The business logic of both the RH and left hand panels data are as irrational they are irritating; someone need to put on their business hat

The point of Trading is to make a Profit.

Profit is when you SELL something for more than you bought it for.

The price you buy something for is the “COST” price. if you sell it for a higher price than your cost price then you make the profit you desire.

The trading page would be wonderful if;

1) the RH term “Value” was dropped and read “Sell Price.” ... = the fixed price the location wants for its goods
2) the Party LH “Value” term was dropped and read “Cost Price”.
.... = the cost of the item your Party pays to iwn the item.
This COST price is fixed.

If we adopt “Sell Price” and “Cost Price”
then each column needs some further adjustments.

3) The LH selling price algorithm is insane and needs to be changed.
This as buying more of some items in a Town causes the cost of those items to increase!!!

Since when does buying MORE of an item a) raise the cost of the item.
b) and apply the higher cost to the whole consignment.
In healthy economies bulk buying means a discount.... not punishment.

What needs to happen is if one buys more units from one town with a staggered pricing policy then the incremental cost price of the total purchase goes down.

4) As a result the RH Cost Price column should reflect the lower AVERAGE cost price paid per piece on the total consignment.

Things get simple and perfect fast, if as in real life, an items RH COST price does not change but it remains the same until you sell it.

So for most goods at the point-of-sale moment the RH Sell Price and LH Cost price are, as in real life trades the same number.

So please keep the RH entry fixed and the COST price fixed on purchases.

Now later on and elsewhere when wants to see if selling will yield a profit from the Party inventory we just check a Towns fixed RH “Selling price “ against Ones own “Cost price”.


If the LH price is lower than the RH ... your in the money and the Trade is profitable.

It would be great to show the Total of the transaction amount and its profit in the lower middle of the page.

The top right amount should, as now, always reflect Total Cash.

To make life even sweeter, and even simpler, the RH lock button can now become passive.
It can be coded to automatically changes color for each line item based on its profitability.
Grey means same price level in RH & LH columns = no profit or loss.
Red means Loss ; don’t sell you stuff; you lose.
Orange = less than 50% profit;
Yellow = 50-100% profit and
Green, being ”in the Green” greater than 100% profit .... double your money.

This order is the color sequence in the Rainbow ..... for if you find the end of the Rainbow then there you will find your pot of GOLD

 

[karijus]

Best trade goods in the game are horses. They cost a lot, they have good margin But for some reason they dont improve trade skill anymore.

Buy desert horses - about 200
And Aserai horses - about 2000
In Askar Iyakis and sell them to western\nothern cities.

Was leveling trading just today, and horses for sure improve trading. Best deal in the game imo.

 

[Maximum997]

Was leveling trading just today, and horses for sure improve trading. Best deal in the game imo.

Yes, before i got trading to 300 with Azerai horses. But right now it just dont want to grow. All my horses marked as yellow. And for some reason my companions dont want to improve scouting, engineering and medicine in my party.(and yes, they are in the right place in clan)

May be it is just a bug from mods.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Best thing I ever did was download and use the autotrader mod. I just set what I want to parameters to be then hit autotrade in each city. It automatically buys low and then when I go to another city, sells the things that sell well.

I guess you could look at this as a cheat but all it is doing it looking at if the tag is green or red, then buys the stuff in red and sells the stuff in green.....exactly like you would be doing manually, except you don't have to spend 20 minutes at each city making these decisions manually.

 

[Joe Friday]

Thanks man!

Ok. I haven't read every single comment so someone may have given you the correct answer. I have seen some wrong answers in here though.

If you are buying. Do NOT buy if their stuff on their side of the menu is red. Buy their stuff if it's green.
If you are selling then sell your stuff if your stuff on your side of the inventory screen is red. If you are selling your wares and your wares are green you're taking a loss.
If you're still confused then go ahead and go to the trade menu in a village or town. Start buying or selling products and watch how the colors change. You'll see real quick how it works.