To add on to the "The player can be informed of an event before it occurs" endeavor, the player could be able to deliberately force an event to occur through the manipulation of various conditions. For example, a civilized planet may have a stable economy and trade routes, but if the player blockades the planet and starts to intercept the trade routes, the planet's economy should begin to suffer, which is the actual event. You can then arrange for a deal with a trading company that will trade with that planet while you continue intercepting any other trading company's ships - as a result, the trading company you made a deal with will make more money, and you get a nice share. Or, you could attempt to spark a war between two factions by attacking one faction's ships with ships of the other faction (as to how a faction is identified, perhaps digital signatures that identify ships as faction X or Y that can be manipulated and used for deception through the use of specialized hardware) - the war being the actual event - and when a faction is at war, it should buy supplies, ships and weapons at higher prices (to fuel the military campaign), which is an opportunity for the player to cash in big time.
If the player actually attains enough power, he can actually start pulling the strings on an entire star system.
All suggestions aside though, Alex is a genius - I'm more than confident that he'll deliver
