Is there any way to know what are the needs at distant stations in terms of goods? I'm at Station A which has a shortage of (lotsa stuff). A has (more stuff) for sale. How can I find out where to take Station A's stuff or locate a source of goods wanted by A?
........................wisesam

Most simple way: visit station and take note of requested items. There is also a plugin that does it.

Also, each station type (barracks, mining, ...) prefer some sort of goods, nor produced there.

Inventory is good to find out where, in this system, pays better for items in storage.

For location of goods, either take note, or check your Inventory, or use a plugin as TradeAssistant, or check VO-wiki, which also gives you all info on plugin installation, commodities locations, ship stats...

http://www.vo-wiki.com

Note: plugins must be "fed" with data by visiting stations... so keep travelling to new stations!

As mentioned above, install the 'trade assistant' plug-in. http://parametric.pro/tgft/ta.zip

I did this and it made a huge difference.

Also, since I had to ask, after it is installed, to activate it in game, type '/ta' in the chat.

There is also a couple of threads here: http://www.tgft.org/forum/board_show.pl?bid=5 at The Guild of Free Traders that I found incredibly helpful to get started with profitable trading.

Cheers!