Due to the poor phrasing and complexity many people may not understand how the new trade system fundamentally works.

A simple breakdown

It's essentially a market manipulation system.  You buy goods at low prices and wait for opportunities to sell them.  This means if your intent is to just buy goods and wagon them over to another town it's probably not going to be profitable.  You can't just trade as you wish Pearl Abyss dictactes when you can and cannot play.  The concept is you do a bunch of research load into the game buying up cheap materials.  You then use the NPCS that laughably might lie to you about market speculation.  You then try to confirm the prices have actually risen then load back into your character and make the haul.  Keep in mind that you are always under time constaints and pressures constantly.  Your goods could expire and it's only worth trading when the value rises.

That's why your trade skill isn't relevant.  The profit is intended to be gained by your keen obversations and doing your homework.  Thus if you could just use your trade skill level to acquire high profits the system itself wouldn't work.

I agree with everyone.  The system is an absolute unfun disaster with time restrictions and rng.  That explaination though I think is accurate on how it's supposed to be done and what is intended. 

Short version - you bought goods at min price (30%) for ~300k per good, you pray and hope that in 7 days those goods going to 300% (while you waste your time babysitting market), then you run with your forest wagon that have 22 slots to make a huge gains! ~2,7mil (lets round to 3) per good, so you made 66milions per wagon - sounds good ? No its sounds trash, because wagon don't teleport, and its lose goods while travel and you need to stay online and always check up the market. Lets assume that average travel time of wagon from loading point to selling is ~30mins, so its ~132mil/h  max proffit possible.

Real question in all this trade rework - can rework trading beat grass beetles in silver/h ?

Correct.  While I never really used the prior system my understanding is that you simply make trade crates and turn them in when you want.  It had many issues such as the Valencia busted buff making all other trade routes useless, but otherwise you could do it any time?  You could buy supplies from the market at low prices, but that was the extent of market factors.  The profits where also somewhat balanced to range and bargain value (dictacted by Trade level).

Some of that could be wrong, but that was my understanding of the prior system.  Aside from many exploits of guild teleport etc.

Trade is also highly problematic as it's a botched AFK activity.   That's why bandits where supposed to attack you on trade routes etc.  It's never functioned or been designed to work.  It's highly problematic to make it a good revenue source if it's mostly AFK.  Thus PA tried to force into being more active in all the wrong ways.

Everyone knows how it works... it's jsut trash.

- the rumors from Old Moon can be false, but NPCs won't lie to you

- You don't necessarily buy cheap items, you buy the ones who will rise. These items can have a high price.

- you can keep your items 7 days where you bought them for a little fee, the idea is to transport them when you're sure about the new price. You can remotely check prices for 1 energy.

Now, I may be wrong but : 

- it seems rumors will tell you which prices will change for items COMING FROM the region from which the rumor is emanating. For example, if Luxuries are supposed to rise in Calpheon and NPC are confirming this, your goal is to buy luxuries from one of the 3 nodes in Calpheon and sell in another region.

Now, even with that said, the max income from this activity seems really low. 

No, rumors very complicated.

First of all goods personal price changes ~equally everywherey, so item that have 30% price will cost ~30% eveywhere.

Goods in groups have individual prices, if rumor say that X goods going up, its only means that some goods in that group going up, not whole group. For example rumor says clothes going up, its means that not group of clothes going up, but some specific good in that group going up (the one you bought for 30% most likely still 30%).

tl dr - trade goods prices is global, that's might be a bug or stupid idea.

Rumors are not so complicated, as long as you can confirm them ; but you have to plan according to them. If you can confirm a plunge, be careful with the plunge.

And no, a rumor will apply to all items of that category in the region. Every item will have the same price everywhere, that's true, that's why your goal is to purchase those who will rise and sell it to another region... Even the closest one, as the distance bonus is negligible. 

You can literately check prices for 1 energy, both for sold and what prices NPC buy them. Also its looks like rumors price changes not instantly, they not even fast, its very slow and overtime process, so you have to wait.

Something also worth mentioning is that the trade exp from active trading went down by a lot in this update due to the devs being to stupid or underpaid to actually change the exp gain per trade item sold.

On the old system you ran point to point selling and restocking your wagon at the same location. Now with the new one you buy at 1 place, sell at another then you have to ride over to a 3rd location to restock. that time running with empty wagon is just pure loss in exp gain compared to the old system.

I spent a decent amount of time the week before this patch lvling my alts to artisan 1 for some life fame. Prof1->art1 took 60-70 minutes per alt doing Glish->Heidel->Velia->Heidel->Glish repeat. Now after the change the shortest route I could put together is Alejandro farm->Velia->Bartali farm-Heidel repeat. This new route took 2h 15min for the same gains. This makes sense since a bit less than half the route is running with empty wagon on the way to restock at farms and that the distance between farms and cities is slightly shorter than the old city to city route hence losing out on some distance bonus.

I also tested a longer route but it remains less effective time vs exp wise as it was on the old system aswell.

How the fuck could this update have been greenlit? Do they seriously think that the trade skill should be lvled solely on the trash crate strat? Do they even think at all? So many questions and very few of them are positive or nice...