r/Commodities

In the beggining of the crisis something like a fifth of the worlds oil was blocked from entering market which was colossal and unseen in the entire modern history of oil, as time passed market adapted and ammount of oil that was being cut off was something like 13-15 milion barrels a day which is still the largest crisis in history larger than all other combined. Today with MOU there is a coridor which provides something like 3-5 milion barrels a day that is a good sign but there is still 8-10 million barrels missing so why is oil price back to the pre war levels, shouldn't prices be elevated atleast a little?

Also, why is the space not flooded with traditional finance market makers given the market is becoming more and more liquid?

I was rejected at the final stage of the Trafigura Graduate Program back in March. The rejection came after HR mentioned that the final assessment had been scheduled, but they had already reached full capacity. They added that if a place became available, I would be given first priority, but unfortunately, nothing opened up.

While the outcome was disappointing, I've since used the time to strengthen my knowledge and prepare for the next application cycle. Some of the areas I've focused on include:

• The oil & gas value chain (upstream exploration, production, transportation, storage, SPAs, etc.)
• Refining economics (outputs from a CDU, blending, refining margin calculations, product flows)
• Power markets, particularly gas–power interdependencies
• Energy trading (to understand risk management and hedging)
• Shipping and commodities operations course by Damien (Through a friend)
• Currently reading The Physical Trade by Samuel Basi

Some of the resources I've worked through include Commodities Demystified, The Economics of Commodity Trading Firms, Prepayment Demystified, and FERC's Energy Primer.

I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who made it into the program, as well as industry professionals who have experience hiring, mentoring, or working with graduate talent in commodities.

What do successful candidates typically do differently? Are there specific skills, experiences, commercial awareness, or technical areas that materially improve someone's chances?

My profile: Male, non-EU citizen based in France. Bachelor's degree in Engineering and recently completed my Master's in Energy Economics from IFP School.

...cushing storage bottom, Houston/Cushing at just 13 cts, 43 LSGO/Brent spread barely off the lows, SHFE oil in contango.

I'm really not commenting on the macro here, I'm way too short term (and a macro tourist) , but trying to adjust my framework and figure out what the leading indicator is in this scenario.

So apparently we're lacking a boatload of refinery capacity, there's strong demand for refined products...but only in the US, because the LSGO/Brent is almost at pre war levels.

At the same time cushing is at storage bottom while China has so much oil that the curve is in contango.

Especially the GO situation seems to be an arb, no? Or is the import cost so high that it can trade above parity?

With margins so incredibly high and crude so low there are several incentives for trade and/or long term investments unless the market got it wrong somewhere. Either we believe in the chinese/cushing refill rally but then the curve wouldn't scream abundance or we see demand destruction in refined products...which is probably not happening at $3. So in order to compress the US cracks a handful of new refineries would do the trick.

Anything I don't see?

I have heard that in normal market conditions the oil market is in contango due to inflation and storage costs. What this says to me is that disregarding market conditions, an oil future 12 months from now is expected to be always higher because someone needs to hold the product for 12 months (so the future is in regard to product already existing?)

If my above understanding is right, does the future market represent the expectation for oil price at all? If price today is $70 and a 12-month future is at $80, is the market actually expecting the price to be at $80 in a year? Or is the $10 premium merely the current inflation and storage cost?

Hi,

Just looking at IEA data , suggesting that “total global observed” crude inventories having only just dipped below 8 billion barrels. The volume of inventory seems very high , why isn’t the crude market considered ridiculously well supplied?

What technical detail am I missing regarding these inventory figures?

Thanks,

Curious how many people on this forum trade commodity calendar spreads.
I feel it’s a pretty small world within futures trading.
Would you share your opinion on this technique? Strong points? Weak points? How’s your experience been?
What software do you use to pick seasonal patterns?
Thanks in advance for sharing!

I was in the recruitment process for a scheduler/operations role with BP Gas (Europe). The process was going well, but it was abruptly cut short. BP shut down its continental European gas trading division (I believe the LNG business is still operating), which obviously affected the outcome of my application.

Does anyone have any insight into why the entire division was shut down? Is the LNG business still operating as it was before?

DM open. It might be sensitive information, but I'm genuinely curious about what happened.

Could PJM actually serve 165gw peak load or do we hit brown out next week?

The states are going to throw a fit if they lost power, given the current political environment.

I'm an analyst on a multi-commodity book and I've been building out models to take a more systematic view on futures and options across the complex. The core feature set I'm working with right now:

- Market structure / term structure (curve shape, carry, roll yield)
- Cross-commodity correlation and spreads
- Seasonality
- Fundamentals (S&D, flows, inventories)

That part feels reasonably well-trodden. Where I keep getting stuck is event risk, geopolitics, conflict, sudden policy/export shocks. These are the moves that actually drive the tails, but they're hard to fit into a feature set built on continuous, mean-reverting-ish variables.

A few things I'd genuinely like to hear other people's experience on:

1. How do you represent a discrete shock (war, export ban, sanctions) in a model that's otherwise fundamentals/structure driven? Regime dummy, jump component, separate overlay, or do you just exclude those periods?
2. Does anyone actually model these as binary/digital payoffs — i.e. P(event) x payoff — rather than trying to forecast the price path? Curious whether that holds up out of sample or just looks clean on paper.
3. On the feature side: what's earned its place in your models and what looked great in backtest but added nothing live?

Happy to trade some notes.

And happy to network if anyone here is working in Switzerland.

I am 34 years of age from Dublin Ireland and have decided to go back and do an Msc in Data Science with the goal of becoming a power scheduler (and eventually a power trader). I have 0 experience in finance and I do plan to try get some internships under my belt if I can before graduating. Will CFA level 1 show financial literacy and improve my chances of getting interviews (albeit not entirely relevant to commodity trading) or will the Data Science degree and networking be enough to get my foot in the door all things equal?

I'm a Bachelor's midlevel market analyst in physical trading looking at a possible move to LA this year. Not sure if this company would want to deal with the HR tasks for a CA residency.

Who has a base out there and any upcoming networking events? It looks like LA is post-fossil so far. Only finding regulatory job postings.

I'm quoting the NYMEX headline markets (CL, RB, HO) and as far as I understand, jet fuel competes with gasoil for refining capacity and napthat competes with gasoline.

I don't see a liquid futures market for jet fuel or naptha so which markets do you actually look at when eyeballing JET/ULSD regrade and the RBOB/naphta markets? Doen't need to be intraday and executable quotes. I just need it as a reference for inventory risk.

Thank you

Do we think PJM hits 160GW peak load next week?

One summer ago I left my internship after a month at the company because I had a lot of demand and stress outside of work and didn’t give 100%. Colleuges were constantly giving me a hard time and I feel like I didn’t give the greatest impression. It is a big company within the industry and I had a crucial role assisting what I want to do in the future. It would help me the most for what I want to do and I already have multiple work experiences even after where I would add the company in my resume and only have one other energy experience m. Do you think it’s worth to add it on my resume? I already have a decent amount of work experience?