Complementary Trading / Link Trading

What is Complementary Trading?

Complementary Trading (Link Trading) is the idea to make a profit from new in-demand squad ideas. These new squad ideas can be through anything, the most common cases are SBCs or new weekly objectives.

This method is related to the Substitute Trading Method a lot, it covers the 2nd way to make a profit from people changing the squads. 

When does it happen?

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

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

If the new card is very meta, you can expect people to change squads and get new squad-building ideas. Less Meta -> less changes -> less price movements -> smaller potential profit

Links are just as important! If a new card just needs 1 link to get 10 chemistry and also only has 1 linkable card, the potential profit will be high! That also means, more link options -> changes spread too much across -> fewer price movements -> smaller potential profit

During Fifa 21 we had a few very nice examples, probably the best one was the release of the MLS Foundations with multiple MLS cards! These cards were popular, almost good enough for the WL, and only needed 1 link to get them on full chemistry. That one needed link was Opara Rulebreaker. As a result, Opara Rulebreaker rose from 10k up to 50k and stayed this high for a longer time. 

Intuition

And that’s also one of the needed skills for this method, knowing some cards by heart and pulling the trigger fast. During peak trading times, if you are 1 minute too late it's already gone. You have to be online at 6 pm and realize the demand within under 1 minute ideally. 

I will be online almost every day at 6 pm to give these tips when I think it's worth doing, but for me to switch back from console/web app to discord and write -> then you to read and react can be too late already.

Another needed skill is to know what links you are looking for. I don’t recommend looking for cards that share the same position. Like if we get a new CB, you don’t look for other CBs. In theory, it kinda makes sense due to the GK – CB – CB Triangle but I can’t remember any case which worked that way. The same goes for CM/CDM/CAM. 

As an example, if we get a CM you ideally look for ST/RW/LW/CB/RB/LB. You already noticed that this covers my point above about the links. That’s why the most common case, we see Wingers and Defenders giving the best profits for Complementary Trading! 

Also worth mentioning, you always aim to get to comparable price sizes. That means you don’t try to link a 300k with a 3k card. Nobody with such a high budget will use cheap players. That’s based on the idea of the player exchange as they free up some additional coins for other new buys. 

Special Cases

Thursday Boost

Sometimes it happens that a specific link will get boosted on Thursday as people wait to complete to get the new card on Thursday. This is very rare but still something to keep an eye on. We will let you know if we notice a potential Thursday Boost. 

POTMs

Something that has been a pattern in recent years and I want to mention here. After December, the POTMs are badly valued and don’t get completed as much anymore -> fewer squad changes -> fewer complementary opportunities. 

The first few months are usually decent but also not ideal. 

Non-Expiring SBCs / Season Rewards

Cutting a bit on the POTM topic as they also run very long, non-expiring SBCs don’t push complementary trading as much as most people expect. That’s just because people spread between different days to complete the SBC. There’s a much bigger psychological push to complete the SBC on the release day when you know it expires in 4 days than when you know that you can complete it sometime later because it's not expiring. 

The same goes for Season rewards, the player base spreads between multiple days and so there isn’t a key demand time to see a rise. 

Leaked Content

With leaked content, you have to be careful and compare the risk/reward and the demand. If you think the trader demand is higher than the demand through completing the SBC, then you should stay away. 

You would be surprised how many bad and inexperienced traders there are who push card prices higher even before the SBC is released and then lose coins as everyone is selling again. I will always aim to help you out with these as it's not easy to identify them.

Summary

- Profit through Squad Changes 

- Meta + Links = Biggest profit

- Avoid the same position

- Aim to identify complementary trading opportunities fast