Goods to never trade in

[brekehan]

Seems today I made my second trading mistake and bought myself 600 Silicon Wafers on the cheap.
Well, much like Energy Cells, stations buy so little of these at at time, it is going to take me hours and hours to get rid of them. The highest quantity I've been able to off load is 40.

So, here my list of things to never ever buy:
Energy Cells
Silicon Wafers

Any others I should avoid?

The only viable trades I've found, at least in my early game, are the illegal ones, hull parts, and refined metals

[ArboriusCZ]

My factories sells HUGE amount of Silicon Wafers (and Water). Every game is different

I have big problem sell illegal stuff like Space Weed and Space Fuel - SCA have dozens of illegal goods factories.

[photomankc]

How early? In my game wafers are ones I can make 100,000+ on a run with. Early on refined metals were fantastic too, but that's tapered off a lot now. How much have you explored? Wafers are used in Microchips and Smartchips which have apparently never-ending demand in my universe. ECells are the similar. They are not easy to trade locally all the time and you have to be careful not to WAY over-buy but once you have the map opened and sats placed ecells are generally needed somewhere.

[Ezarkal]

It depends on your playthrough.

There's a certain level of randomness in the stations on each new games, so ware demand and offer will vary between playthrough.

Some will always be good sellers.

Also keep in mind that some wares are very good sellers when provided by your stations, but not when you try to sell them manually. E-cells, medical supply and food stations will get a big bunch of tiny orders and generate profit through them, but you'll have a hard time finding a station needing a huge lump of them.

That's how I usually generate profit through silicon wafers.
First, set up the station, let it stack up ware and generate profit for a while. (Do study local supply and demand first, though)
Later, upgrade it with microchip or smart chip production.

[Imperial Good]

Silicon Wafers are usually one of the most lucrative products to trade in. If your game is still fresh (less than 24 hour play time) then it is possible that most of the demand has not yet been created.

Only 3 factories buy Silicon Wafers. These are Microchips, Scanning Arrays and Smart Chips. Of these both Scanning Arrays and Smart Chips use very little. For example a single Silicon Wafer production can supply a massive 20 Smart Chip productions and that is not even factoring in labour (which you always want!). Scanning arrays use a little more but you can still produce more of them than the entire universe needs from just 1 or 2 silicon wafer productions. On the other hand Microchip productions use 1/2 the output of a Silicon Wafer production, and NPC stations can have many of these such as 4 or even 6 attached to them.

Silicon Wafers to Smart Chip and Scanning Array NPC factories is not very profitable as their demand is low. On the other hand it is very profitable to sell to Microchip factories since their demand is almost always high.

Energy cells is not a good I would recommend for manual trade. It still makes decent profit if left to station traders since almost every NPC station needs them but with manual trading you will wear yourself out managing the orders.

In my playthrough the only good that I cannot shift is Food Rations. Unlike Paranid and Teladi economies, my Argon and Antigone are completely saturated with the stuff.

[Falcrack]

If you bought a big load of silicon wafers and don't know what to do with it, just build a smart chip station and drop off your silicon wafers there. You'll use it up in no time, and make a tidy profit in the process.