Complementary Trading / Link Trading

What is Complementary Trading?

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

This method is related to the Substitute Trading Method a lot, it basically covers the 2nd way to make profit from people changing the squads. This time focusing more around the new content!

When does it happen?

Complementary Trading always happens but at different intensivities! 

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 should be high! That also means, more link options -> changes spread too much across -> less price movements -> smaller potential profit

During Fifa 20 we had a few very nice examples, probably the best one was Promes OTW SBC! He was meta, needed 1 link to get 10 chem on the LW and Tagliafico IF was the only useable card to link. As a result, Tagliafico IF almost instantly flew from 35k up to 75k.

Needed Knowledge/Skills

And that’s also one of the needed skills for this method, knowing some cards by heart and pulling the trigger fast. During the peak trading times, if you are 2 minutes too late its already gone. You really have to be online at 6pm and realise the demand within under 1 minute ideally. 

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

Another needed skill is to know what links you are looking for. I really don’t recommend looking for cards which 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 really worked that way. 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 then. That’s based on the idea of the player exchange kinda, without going too much into future guide topics, new card drops -> sell player -> has more coins -> looks for best value for the new free coins to link. 

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. We will talk about Thursday Flipping in the next guide in more detail and cover it there too, but just so you know that this is a reference for a future guide. 

POTMs

Something that has been a pattern in the recent years and I really want to mention here. After like December, the POTMs really lose out on interest and don’t get completed as much anymore -> less squad changes -> less 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 due to the fact that 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 then when you know that you can complete it some time later because its not expiring. 

Same goes for Season rewards, the player base spreads between any day and any hour so there isn’t a key demand time to see a rise. 

Leaked Content

With leaked content you have to be careful and really 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 unexperienced traders there, I will always try to help you out with these as its not easy to identify them.

Summary

- Profit through Squad Changes 

- Meta + Links = Biggest profit

- Avoid same position

- Aim to identify complementary trading opportunities fast