What spread trading is
The core idea behind Path of Trader
Spread trading is the simplest idea in any market and the hardest to do well: buy a currency for less than it's worth, sell it for more, and keep the difference. On the Path of Exile 2 Currency Exchange that difference is the spread — the gap between what buyers are paying and what sellers are asking for the same currency, at the same moment. Path of Trader exists to help you find those gaps, record the trades you take, and see whether they actually paid.
Where the spread comes from
The Currency Exchange is an order book. For any pair — say Exalted Orbs against some other currency — some players post buy orders and others post sell orders, each at their own ratio, and the exchange matches them. Because buyers want to pay as little as possible and sellers want to receive as much as possible, the two sides rarely meet at exactly the same number. That difference is your opportunity.
Hold Alt while hovering a market and the exchange shows every competing order, not just the headline ratio. For example, you might see people buying 6.1 of a given currency for one Exalted Orb on one side, while on the other side an Exalted Orb costs 7.4 of that same currency. Sit in the middle — buy at the cheaper rate, sell at the dearer one — and you pocket roughly 1.3 of that currency each time the cycle completes. The edge per trade is small; done at volume, it adds up.
Instant fills vs. patient orders
Every order you place is a bet on patience. Post at an aggressive ratio — close to what the other side is already paying — and it fills fast, but your margin is thin. Post at a patient ratio and you keep more of the spread, but you wait: minutes, hours, sometimes until the next day. A rule of thumb from experienced flippers: if an order fills within a few minutes of posting, you priced it generously and probably left money on the table. The craft is posting wide enough to be worth it, tight enough to actually fill before the market moves.
A worked example
Say Orbs of Annulment are trading around 16 Exalted to buy, and you think they'll clear at 22. You buy 40 at 16 ex each and post them to sell at 22. The spread is 6 ex per orb — the 22 ex sell minus the 16 ex buy — and across 40 orbs that's 240 ex of planned profit, before the market has its say. Nothing is real yet: the buy is capital you've committed, and the 240 is only a plan until your sell orders actually fill at 22. That lifecycle — an open position with planned profit, then a completed trade with realized profit once it sells — is exactly what Path of Trader records.
Gold, liquidity, and risk
Three things decide whether a clean-looking spread is worth taking.
Gold. Posting orders on the exchange costs gold, and the fee scales with both the quantity and the rarity of what you're trading. A spread that looks profitable per unit can evaporate once gold is paid on a large stack, so factor the fee into thin margins.
Liquidity. A spread only pays if both legs fill. High-volume currencies like Exalted move constantly; bulkier or rarer currencies such as Divine Orbs have fewer counterparties, so large orders can sit unfilled. The stock counts shown next to each competing order tell you how much depth is really there.
Risk. Prices drift with the time of day and lurch on patches and league events. Capital tied up in an unfilled sell order is capital you can't redeploy, and an order priced on the wrong side of a move may never fill at all. Treat every open position as money at risk, not money already earned.
Planned, realized, and normalized
Path of Trader keeps these three numbers honest. Planned profit is the spread you're aiming for while a position is open. Realized profit is what you actually captured, recorded only when you mark the trade completed at its real sell price. And because you'll flip many different currencies, every result is normalized into a single display currency (Exalted by default), so wins in different orbs sum into one trustworthy total — alongside your win rate and capital growth over time.
When you're ready to place real orders, see how to flip currency.