How does a new owner evaulate trades so there not taken advantage of

Look at other trades being made in your world and note any reactions being made in world chat. Also, find a veteran owner in your world to coach you up and to bounce ideas off of. Try not to make any rash trades in your first season. Other owners will take advantage of a newbie owner. Be wary of taking on big and lengthy contracts as well. Look at the contract status of any major-league player you are taking on.

Learn how to negotiate

You posted about still gaining a feel for the ratings a couple of days ago. Make sure you have a handle of that before making any trades. Along with understanding current ratings, make sure you have some what of an understanding of how player progression works as well.

Look at teams of owners who win a lot and see what kind or ratings there players have.

There really is no overwhelmingly good reason to trade in your first season if you plan on keeping the team long term. Best advice just don't trade in season 1

It's a bit of a deep dive, but if you want to take the time you can look back at the entire trade history of the league. At least start with the ones your previous franchise has done, so you can evaluate how they worked out over time. You'll probably see one or two mistakes you don't want to repeat. You can also see the trading patterns of your fellow owners.

Trades don't necessarily occur in a vacuum. Every depth chart is different, every contract is different, people have different motivations.

Most trades in HBD are veteran for prospect(s). There are strategies to selling and there are strategies to buying.

#1 will always be talent evaluation. Understanding how good veteran players are versus how good a prosect currently is and a feel for how good they're going to be.

For buying, understanding which teams should be in sell-mode prior to them actually telling the world chat that they are. Look at the standings. Bad teams have no reason to roster high-salary veterans. Send a TC and ask for their best player, or someone you would really need at a difficult to find position such as SS or CF or C. There are guys available who are not on trade block. Guys who are on the actual trade block are available for cheap because their owners are advertising their availability.

If you are selling, don't bother advertising your terrible replacement-level guys. Nobody cares. People only want your best players. Offer your top guy on world chat in order to solicit trade chats. Find out how many people are interested. Go through their depth charts and pick your favorite 5 things and say "I'm interested in these players, I'll do it for the best one, or two of three, or three of five". Then go to the next team and say XYZ is the best offer, you will need to offer ABC to be competitive.

Do the work yourself, instead of just saying "send me an offer" and just accepting/rejecting. Leverage offers against one another, thats how you get better returns

If someone randomly asks for an unadvertised guy in TC, take that player to WC and say "currently fielding offers for player X, TC if interested" and then that creates leverage to get a better offer out of the first guy

There's something really important implicit in pjf13's post above.

Most of the time you should be focusing on what you want to acquire, not what you want to move. Even when you're the "seller," focus on the types of prospects you want to acquire, being reasonable. You're always looking to do better than just "addition by subtraction."

I also agree with most of the rest of that post. I'm less fond of leveraging than pjf13 is-- HBD is a social game, and thus there are long-term risks associated with playing hardball (like owners may not want to trade with you), and also people may not want to be leveraged, and may pull their offer-- but everything else there is really good, and leveraging isn't a bad play used judiciously.

The best advice I got was newbies should avoid making trades until they understand the ratings work and how they affect players. Its good that you are asking the question but at them same time it should be a warning to be very cautious if you are jumping into the trade market.

@dedelman- that is fair, and reasonable. You always want to be respectful and someone worth doing business with in the future

My tone was moreso to be in the mindset of negotiation as opposed to simply accept/reject. Talk to people, get to know the people in your league