The story so far...

Day 1 went well.  Very well.

A little exploring took me north, to a system named Power Circle.  A couple of solar power plants in here were selling energy cells, and a couple of stations in the system, and in the one I came from, seemed to be buying them.  The prices weren't great, and there were a few other ships coming in and out running these items, but with a bit of timing I was able to get the eCells for 12 credits a piece and pop them off to some stations buying them for between 16 and 19 credits a piece depending on my timing.  Profit is profit, and I'd be damned if I was going to waste time waiting for these stations to run a little lower on the things, just for another trader to catch me unawares and sneak a load in before me.

I bought some speed upgrades for my freighter to keep on top of the competition, and I soon had enough money that eCells became inefficient - filling my cargo with them didn't empty my coffers, and I intend to make every penny work wherever possible, so I looked for something heavier to trade in.

It dawned on me that the stations I was shipping eCells to needed them as part of a production process, and some of these stations were producing Ore.  Ore is clearly not the end of any production chain, so I decided to look for some stations that needed it.  While my Mercury freighter carried on with some eCells runs, I flew my Discovery around and explored.  Picked up a few helpful items from the Argon Equipment Docks - a duplex scanner for quicker exploration (bigger scanner range), upgrades to my ship's engines for faster movement, and some trade software to let me pull up prices for any station in the system without needing to dock up.  Very useful.  I've got my hauler remotely following instructions, while I myself zip about in my scout to find what's needed where.

Sure enough, a few systems south of Power Circle, lies Argon Prime, and around that area there are a bunch of weapons manufacturers needing ore.  Badly.  I can buy this stuff for 50 credit a pop and dump it for 128.  Lovely.  A few runs of that and I'm in the six-figure mark for my bank balance.  The great thing is, there are so many of these weapons manufacturers that even if someone does come down here with ore and beat me to one of them, I can offload onto the rest.  I pondered the possibility of another ship, but decided that it would be best if I left that for when I have some different runs to make - a more diverse portfolio, if you will.

For now, I'm sticking with what I know until I find the next golden egg.  I might need to get to grips with trading these weapons my drop-off points are using this ore for.

Fly safe.

-Dru