Complementary Trading / Link Trading

What is Complementary Trading?

Complementary Trading (Link Trading) is the idea of making a profit through new content and new squad-building ideas around new content. EA releases new content and people want to build that content into their squads. That creates new demand on the market as people need other cards to get the new content on full chemistry. 

When does it happen?

Complementary Trading happens with almost every release but it's not always profitable. 

As a general rule, there are two key indicators to determine it: Meta and Links. 

If the new card is very meta (powerful in terms of gameplay), you can expect people to change their squads and get new squad-building ideas. More Meta -> more people change their squad to play with the new content -> more demand -> more potential profit.

Links are just as important as the meta aspect. Limited links can pinpoint the demand for a specific card or specific group of cards and these can see a strong price increase. Content released with many possible links creates demand across all possible cards and the price increases will be smaller. Fewer links -> more pinpointed demand -> higher price increases 

Liga Nos cards are a great example in previous years. They usually have very limited options in terms of squad building which makes them very profitable if we get a new Liga Nos SBC especially if it’s a meta or popular card.

Intuition

Intuition is a needed skill for this method. You not only need to know some cards by heart and pull the trigger fast to buy, but you also need to understand when a card is very meta or very popular. You have to be online at 6 p.m. and realize the demand within a few minutes or the deal is likely gone. 

Intuition is also needed to understand the right price area. That means you don’t try to link a 300k with a 3k card. Nobody with such a high budget will use cheap players. Most of the time cheap cards link with cheap cards and expensive cards link with expensive cards. There are exceptions and this is not a strict rule, but it gives you an idea of what to look for. 

Special Cases

Non-Expiring SBCs / Season Rewards

Non-expiring SBCs don’t push complementary trading as much as most people expect. People can complete the SBC at any time which spreads the demand across multiple days and a slow market change is more likely. There’s a much bigger psychological push to complete the SBC on the release day when you know it expires in 2 days.

Season Rewards are similar, the player base gets their rewards at different days and that spreads the demand across multiple days. Complementary Trading is the most efficient if the demand is pinpointed which is not the case for Season Rewards.

Leaked Content

Buying complementary cards with leaked content is tricky. Sometimes the leaked content looks better than the actual content which starts a sell-off after the release as the demand for the links is not as strong as expected. We recommend skipping complementary trading for leaked content releases unless there is a huge surprise and the SBC is way better than expected. 

However, Complementary Trading works at the release of leaks too. Similar to content releases, you have a very short window to buy the cards after the leak and you can sell the cards in the hype of the SBC at any point. 

Summary

- New content engages new buys

- Aim for pinpointed demand

- Keep track of leaks