Post-Withdrawal Returns! MA's Revenge Pt. 2
Prologue: Decided to drop by a couple of event areas for the hell of it. Don't have the bankroll to guarantee placement but sometimes you just feel like mindlessly grinding away at an event and not chasing markup. Decided to hit up a few markup areas afterwards 
Had to end the run a bit early since there were no amps on auction.
Cost:
TT Cost (Probes/Uni Ammo+Finder Decay): 1063.76 PED
Markup cost on Finder: N/A
Drill Decay: 2.78 PED
Fuel/Travel/Warp Cost: 1.04 PED
Amplifier MU: 28 PED
Refiner: 0.22 PED
Total Cost: 1095.80 PED
TT lost to LA tax (~theoretically): 18.80 PED
Approximate Markup Breakdown
1)
Event Area 1 (OLA43 - 86 PED Lytairian Global omitted for markup calculation)
Ore: 107.40%
Enmatter: 114.10%
Averaging out at around 110%, not bad for an event area with a 4% Tax. You have a fighting chance to break even or profit, and possibly win the event as well!
2)
Event Area 2 (Pempredo Island - Very short run - 2.5% Tax)
Average Markup: 108.8%
On a longer grind with higher depth, I could see Pempredo being 3-4% higher than this. The market is just rather weak at the moment. Again, not a terrible space to grind an event. Plus, no mobs and low tax
Great for a newbie with an F-105 that just wants to skill up cheaply and not worry about profit.
3)
Misc./Markup Areas
Average Markup: 129.72%
Not a terrible run thanks to this. I hit some of my favorite areas hard, but after my first amp, markup significantly diminished. In my first ~100 drops average markup was holding steady around 140-150%, then the next 15 claims were TT trash. It seems that the cap for ultra-rare resources has been significantly reduced. Possibly due to a combination of hoarding/MA intervention. I need to do a bit more research on whether this resource throttling is server-specific or universe-wide.
TT return: 899.91 PED (84.60%)
Markup Added (Minus Auction Fees): +164.72
Profit/Loss: -31.17 PED
Comments: Interesting day. OLA43 was more pleasant than expected (aside from the hungry Neconu). Pempredo wasn't looking too great. My markup areas seemed to be performing. Caly may not be too terrible, for now. Unfortunately amp supply seems to be waning. Crafters not crafting? Or is someone buying out all the medium amps?
I'm not going to sugarcoat it, there is not much markup out there for the average miner at the moment. Can you break even? Sure. Can you profit? Yeah, a bit. However, for serious and consistent profit in the current market, you either need 1) Very strong consistent markup areas, and/or 2) An enormous bankroll and a strategy that complements it (ie: high volume mining with a slight profit margin or UL amp).
It seems that markup has displaced from the rarer minerals towards the more common. The best explanation I suppose would be a reduction in advanced crafting activity... But I'm no expert on crafting. Things like Narc and Dianum have floated up to 105-107%, whereas rarer minerals such as Ignisium have sunk to 125-130%. What does this mean? Newbie miners will have a much easier time breaking even, but significant profit has become trickier to achieve.
Fed about 350 PED of trash resources into TT.
And of course, my recent TT hole continues to grow
I wonder if MA has added any decent alternatives? 
