Is it just me, or are the foreign traders strangely devoid of trade goods as of late? I just had one of those foreign trader events, and I checked out 4 seperate groups of foreign traders. Almost all of them had "nothing to trade" when asked for trade, and the few that did have something for trade just had junk.

Only 5 of them (out of all 4 groups) actually had anything at all for trade: One of them offered me a stone axe, another offered a wooden mug, another offered a handaxe, another offered a rock and a hard staff, and the other offered a cold meal. Several of them are carrying an item like a heavy crossbow or battlesword or somesuch, but it's not for trade. Several of them are also wearing bits of iron and mail armor, but none of them have any for trade.

I had saved up a big pile of various good and superb furs to trade when I found foreign traders, and all I can find is disappointment. I wound up buying my crossbow and armor in various village general stores for a bunch of javelins that I had extra.

I confirm this. They went from being overloaded with armor and swords ( and few 'practical' items) in the last version to wandering the forest nearly empty handed. A few do offer the odd hauberk or helm, but for the most part they carry little of anything and are often unwilling to trade even that.

In the last release foreign traders were tuned not to carry as extensive amount of armours etc. to trade as before. Which was just plain too much. The groups you have encountered indeed aren't much of tradesman, but hopefully (and I'd like to say surely) more equipped tradesmen will come on your way one day.

I think the problem is the items that they are getting to trade are being equipped instead. Like all the armor I could find on them they were wearing, and any carrying swords or crossbows they wouldn't trade (I assume it was reserved as their personal weapon, even though they had no arrows in the case of the crossbows).

I did manage to get a long mail hauberk from one that wasn't damaged at all by shooting the poor fellow in the head, so I assumed it was meant for trade since everything I get from other npcs is damaged except for the weapons.

I'm guessing the guy had two of them?
they couldn't wear both at once after all.

No, he only had one, and he was wearing it. It just didn't have any durability missing. I assume it was meant for trading, but he was wearing it and thus didn't want to trade it. But when I killed him I got it and it was completely undamaged, while all his other worn items were damaged.

odd, never managed to get any armor off a corpse that was undamaged.
bad luck for me I guess? or really nice luck for you ;)

I never find undamaged armor either, thats what led me to believe it was some sort of bug causing them to wear their trade goods.

I assumed that if the items are generated as trade goods that they are undamaged, and that the damage is only when they are generated as worn items, it's a logical conclusion I think :D

I may be completely wrong, but it would make the traders occasionally wearing heavy armor but never selling any make more sense(unless they are carrying multiple pieces, I saw one carrying 2 mail mittens, wore 1 traded 1). It might just be luck :D