Trade Durability Grade

A big headline profit is meaningless if the margin collapses in transit. Freighter jumps are slow, and popular routes are shared with other traders who see the same opportunity you see. The question is not only whether a margin exists right now, but whether it will still be there when your hauler arrives and starts listing cargo at the destination.

Durability is especially important on courier contracts with long expiry windows, on round-trip routes where you commit to both legs at once, and on nullsec or jump-freighter logistics where a single run can take an hour or more of real time. On short station-trading flips inside the same hub, durability matters less because there is essentially no travel.

Four conditions make a trade decay faster. Shallow order books on either side mean one competing trader can erase the gap in a single cycle. A large quantity relative to the item's average daily volume means you yourself are the event that will reprice the market on arrival. A small total number of orders suggests slow market self-repair — it will take longer for fresh orders to rebuild depth after any trade. And a tight margin buffer leaves no room for adverse price drift: a 4% margin can turn into a 0% margin with one minor competitor adjustment.

Durability also interacts with reliability. A highly reliable A-grade trade with a tight margin can still be fragile if the margin itself is narrow, while a B-grade trade with a 20% margin has plenty of cushion even if one concentration issue exists. Reading both grades together paints a fuller picture than either one alone.

The three durability tiers map directly to operational postures. Rigid trades, score 70 and above, will sit in your contract pipeline for hours while you plan a multi-system round trip — this is the safest category for long freighter runs. Normal trades, 40 to 69, should execute within the current hour; it is worth rechecking prices at both ends right before you commit cargo. Fragile trades, 0 to 39, are opportunistic — take the margin immediately or walk away, because it may not be there when you finish the run.

The tiers are deliberately forgiving at the upper end and strict at the lower end. Most profitable EVE Online trades fall in the normal tier, and the durability grade is most useful for separating the routes you can trust to hold from the ones you need to rush.

On rigid trades you can stack multiple contracts, plan a round trip, pick up extra opportunistic cargo mid-route, and even pause to handle real life without feeling rushed. Normal trades are your bread and butter — run them directly without side quests. Fragile trades are best executed when you are already at the hub and do not need to freight anywhere; treat them as local station-trading plays rather than hauling runs.