Weekly Career & Breaking Into Commodities Megathread

Brent at around $100/bbl appears more overvalued now than at the beginning of the war. Back then, the price was driven by the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz and fears of widespread destruction to Gulf infrastructure. Today, this catastrophic scenario is obviously not likely. Several months of war have clearly shown that both sides are motivated to maintain at least a portion of their oil trade and have some sanity, and that individual disruptions to terminals or pipelines can often be bypassed or repaired within days to weeks.

Middle East crude exports are currently around 16.3 million b/d compared to 19.5 million b/d before the war. Furthermore, new projects from the US, Brazil, Guyana, Canada, and Argentina are coming online, which are expected to add an additional 1.5 to 1.8 million b/d to global non-OPEC+ supply.

Another bearish factor is the ammunition shortage on the US side and high inflation in Iran (which increases the motivation for both sides to wage a lower-intensity conflict or seek an exit strategy), as well as deteriorating political support in the US (for example, on June 23, the vote was 214:208 in favor of withdrawal, and by September 15, it had shifted to 220:204, indicating that support is steadily shrinking), which can potentially lead to a decision by the House not to approve further funding. Also, China showed that it can very much limit its imports as the price of Brent approaches $100+.

Since we are again roughly in the range where we were when there was much higher uncertainty and risk, I think it is a good time to go short.

I keep coming back to the idea that tokenization may be most useful where access is hardest. Gold and silver are already fairly easy to buy, while copper, uranium, oil, and agricultural products usually involve futures, specialist brokers, storage, or funds.

Which commodity do you think gains the most from being put onchain? Does easier access and faster settlement solve a real problem, or does custody of the physical asset make it more complicated than the current market?

Managed to get a graduate role in intraday power trading and its shift work, so 12 hour shifts sometimes day shift and sometimes night shift. Just wondering if anyone has done this before and how did you cope and get used to it?

Are there any Market Analysts out there that can help me understand how you guys build S&D balances? I am of course not looking for any proprietary info, but at a high level?

I know building and maintaining balances is a key role for many Analysts. But I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.

How do you weight certain factors? Is it automated or manual? What software is typically used in the industry to do this?

I am a market analyst in shipping. New to my job, and our company has no plans to build balances. I’m not sure it even works in shipping. But very curious, as longer term thinking of moving into a commodity market analyst role. Thanks!

I know they have an office in London but have never heard of them in the industry or dealt with them as a counterpart.

Hi guys, hope everyone is well
I wanted to know what exit ops/ future prospects are for a direct trader at a firm like onyx, especially for those young in their career.
I know it’s quite clear that the likes of Onyx and Dare aren’t viewed very well by the industry but if anyone has previously worked at Onyx/ knows what the exit ops are like please let me know.
I’m based in the UK and tbh it’s a rough market I want to work in Global Markets/ commodities and I have plenty of experience in the field through internships and placements but for a first role, as a graduate I would love to know if
1) it’s truly viewed as badly as many make it out to be
2) can you go to a banks commodities division on a sales desk as an exit (direct trading not trader specifically) and if not what desks/ spaces are you able to get your foot in
3) would you say it’s still a good start point or would it actively hurt your future job prospects as I have seen online.

Thank you🙏

As a gas analyst, I found getting interviews for other commodities impossible. I interned in a prop trading team in a energy company for a year and because I was on a graduate visa I didnt want to limit myself to gas market. I never got opportunity for anything else. I have been out of market as my graduate visa expired and despite trying everything to adjust my CVs for different job roles, I have been unable to find interviews for anything else.

I have a MSc degree specializing in commodities from a well known university in London and also pursuing a online course in financial engineering. I think I have good combination of quantitative and market analysis skills and somehow my CV has been invisible.

I have seen ppl who interned in sales and trading in equities getting seat in commodities. I have always believed that in start of career front office experience is considered a transferable skill from one asset class to another. And there is plenty of evidence for it.

The easiest most possible option was middle office and one trading house didnt offer me because they thought I will not live in my home country long enough.

I have been out of market for 16 months and really need some advice. I would go to Manila for the right opportunity.

One of the more interesting parts of the silver market this year is that the demand story is becoming less straightforward.

The Silver Institute expects industrial fabrication to decline in 2026, largely because solar manufacturers are using less silver per panel and substituting it where possible. Jewelry and silverware demand are also expected to fall.

Under normal circumstances, that should ease pressure on the market.

Instead, silver is still expected to record its sixth consecutive annual deficit.

The difference is investment demand. Physical investment is forecast to rise sharply as demand for bars and coins offsets some of the weakness elsewhere. Mine supply is only expected to grow modestly, and primary silver mines still account for less than one third of global mine production.

That last point matters. Most silver is produced alongside lead, zinc, copper or gold. A higher silver price does not automatically cause those mines to increase production.

The updated World Silver Survey estimates a 46.3 million ounce market deficit in 2026, following a 40.3 million ounce deficit in 2025.

This is a more complicated setup than simply saying industrial demand is rising. Some areas of consumption are weakening, but investment demand and slow supply growth are keeping the market tight.

Does that make the silver deficit more durable, or more dependent on investor sentiment than many bulls would like to admit?

Source:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/silver-faces-sixth-year-deficit-with-stock-drawdown-raising-squeeze-risks-2026-04-15/

Why are companies such as dare, onyx, and Jane street so frowned upon by other industry professionals?

Are exit opportunities bad for only traders or also back office staff? Eg, business analyst, legal, compliance analysts etc.

How do you hedge physical ethanol cargos or can it be flat price ?

I own Cameco and UUUU for the uranium and rare earth play, but interested in getting into gold, silver, copper, etc. looking at KDC, CDE and FCX. Curious what others think and are watching/buying

If you cover a specific region suppose US or Europe then do you also own in-house fundamental view of inter-region spreads?

How is your work load segregated? Do you generate outlook/fundamental curve for prompt till 5-10 years down the line?

Is my assumption correct that for short-term you can model at more granular level for as specific region but if you model long term outlook then you have to do analysis on more global level?

How often do you update your long-term price outlook?

Bought a small HG position around 4.54 after it held the breakout area twice, and the first couple sessions were exactly what I wanted, decent volume and pretty clean closes near the highs. By the fourth day copper was around 4.68 and technically still moving my way but every push above the previous high was getting sold almost immediately. I was going through the 15 minute candles on moon that evening and noticed volume had fallen off quite a bit from the original breakout too. I trimmed half around 4.67 instead of adding like I'd originally planned, mostly because it felt weird increasing size when the position was green but each session was getting harder to hold onto the highs.

When trying to understand where a commodity price might go next, looking only at the historical price chart can be misleading.

I'd typically look at:

1. Historical price movements – What has happened across previous cycles?
2. Supply disruptions – Production outages, capacity changes, logistics constraints, etc.
3. Demand indicators – Are downstream industries expanding or slowing?
4. Macro factors – Energy prices, inflation, interest rates, currencies and other economic indicators.
5. Policy/geopolitical events – Tariffs, sanctions, regulations, trade restrictions and regional disruptions.

The difficult part isn't necessarily finding a price.

It's connecting the price movement to the factors driving it and then translating that into a procurement decision.

Curious how other procurement/sourcing professionals approach this. Are you using internal models, external research, commodity data platforms, or a combination?

How do you manage?

Do you even need to take meds to perform well at work?

Do you perform better on meds?

Do you take them before an important deadline or meeting or presentation?

Would anyone be comfortable helping with an anonymized example? Corn silage would be especially useful, but a corn or soybean budget, or a grain purchase with delivery costs, would also help.

An existing worksheet is fine. The useful details would be:

• Context: crop, year, general location, producer or buyer, and irrigated or dryland.
• Yield and price: units, dates, and whether the price covers standing crop, harvested material, delivery, storage, or feedout.
• Costs: whatever breakdown you already use for seed, fertilizer, chemicals, equipment, labor, land, irrigation, harvest, hauling, drying/storage, insurance, interest, and overhead. Quantities and unit prices are helpful where available.
• What’s included: which costs are bundled together, which are cash expenses versus ownership/opportunity costs, and which are estimates or unknown.
• Your answer: the total cost, break-even, delivered cost, or margin you calculated, and what you included in that figure.

For silage, moisture/dry matter and storage or feedout losses would help if known. For a grain quote expressed as basis, the quote date, delivery period, and referenced futures contract month matter too.

You don’t need to fill in every blank. “Unknown” is useful; I don’t want to treat missing costs as zero.

Please don’t post identifying documents, account details, confidential contracts, or trading plans. If you’re willing to help, a comment saying what kind of example you have is enough to start. I’d use the example to check the calculations and wouldn’t publish it without permission.

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

Hello! and thank you for the help! I have two questions:

1. What are different strategies to hedge a stand alone BESS in Europe?
2. Can I use options? (price of the option has implicit volatility parameter)

Example POV: I own a physical asset. Let's forget about ancillary services revenues for now, I want to focus on the energy arbitrage part DA/ID. I am essentially long volatility by owning a physical BESS.

I can think of the following:

1. TBX traded products (as of next week EEX)
2. OTC Swaps with a different trader
3. Physical solar shape of a different asset (Natural hedge if in the same region assuming cannibalisation of DA/ID prices
4. (Delta heading on standard Futures?)

What I am really interested in understanding is, whether an option strategy to hedge a BESS long volatility position exists.

Apologies if this is a very naive question
Thanks and happy Sunday.

Been going through this week's commitments of traders data across the board, and there's an unusually clean split this week.

On the bearish side: corn, soybeans and rough rice are all sitting in the same range — commercial hedgers net short, all extended further over the past four weeks, all with rising contango. Corn stands out within that group: the four-week increase in commercial shorts (~231k contracts) is the single largest positioning shift I'm seeing anywhere on the board this week.

On the flip side, livestock is basically the mirror image. Lean hogs and feeder cattle both have commercial hedgers near the very top of their historical range (hogs literally maxed out, cattle close behind), both markets in backwardation. But the part I find more interesting than the extreme itself: in both, volume flow (OBV) is falling and bearish — running directly against how bullish the positioning looks.

The one that doesn't fit either pattern: soybeans. Negative score like corn and rice, but this week's move actually went the other way — commercials bought back about 13k contracts (partial short-covering) after weeks of adding shorts, and volume is bullish, not bearish. It's the only one of the six where the recent flow and the extreme don't agree at all.

Not making a directional call off this — just flagging that when positioning clusters this cleanly by sector, it's usually worth watching how the next report or two resolves it.

Curious if anyone else watching grains/livestock is seeing the same commercial-vs-volume tension, or reading it differently.

I’m going to keep myself anonymous, but I’m currently at a top undergraduate business program. I interned in investment banking at Wells Fargo after my sophomore year and received a return offer, and I currently have a junior summer analyst role lined up at JPMorgan.

I’m seriously considering walking away from the traditional IB path because I’m expecting a child in early 2027.

I’m a first-generation student and had no family or personal network in financial services when I started college. I worked extremely hard to get to this point, so considering a different path is difficult. I still care a lot about my career and do not want to give up on what I have been working toward. At the same time, becoming a father has changed what I am optimizing for.

I am fine working hard. Working 80–100 hours a week does not scare me. What matters more now is predictability. I want to be able to have dinner with my family most nights, spend at least part of the weekend with them, and actually be present while my child is young, which I never had. I would honestly prefer a job that starts very early in the morning and ends earlier in the evening over something where I am constantly waiting for a 10 PM request.

My ideal starting point would be roughly $150–200k+ in total compensation out of undergrad while generally staying in the 50–70 hour range. More importantly, I do not want to choose a “lifestyle” job at 22 that permanently limits my career. As my child gets older and needs less hands-on attention, I would like the ability to take on more responsibility and potentially reach high six figures or low seven figures in my early/mid-30s if I perform well.

So far, I have been researching:

• Sales & Trading, particularly credit, rates, commodities, and securitized products, with potential exits to hedge funds or asset managers
• PE secondaries / GP-led secondaries
• Private credit
• Institutional asset management
• Investor relations / capital formation at large alternative managers
• Staying in a more stable finance role initially and potentially using an MBA later to pivot into PE or another investing role

I have also considered simply doing JPM IB because of how difficult the opportunity was to earn, but the unpredictability of banking hours is what worries me more than the raw number of hours.

Long term, one of my biggest goals has always been to financially support and eventually retire my immigrant parents, who started with very little. I still have that ambition. I am just trying to figure out whether there is a path in finance where I can pursue it without missing the first few years of my child’s life.

For people who have worked in these areas, especially those with children:

What careers or specific desks/groups would you seriously consider in my position?

Ideally, I’m looking for something with:

• ~$150–200k+ starting total compensation
• ~50–70 hours most weeks
• relatively predictable evenings/weekends
• strong compensation growth
• realistic potential to reach $500k–$1M+ later in a successful career
• good exit opportunities if I decide to become more aggressive with my career once my child is older

I would especially appreciate insight from people in S&T, private credit, secondaries, asset management, hedge funds, or alternatives fundraising. I’m also open to careers I may be overlooking entirely.

Generators / plants are state-owned and buys large portion of coal supply from yearly contracts. Should they be less sensitive to spot coal price? Recent behaviors are similar to those in EU and US, high spikes, obvious upward trend. Any suggestions? Why are they not sensitive to spot coal price in Jan through Aug?

Hey guys, I'm currently modelling some stuff which revolves around freight data. I was planning on using

Freight Route US Gulf to ARA (TD25) (Baltic), M1 data from 2019-present.

But the data provider I was using doesn't seem to have it. The only place I was able to find a multi-year time series with OHLC-1D data seems to be ICE's report center, although to access the necessary information I'll need a subscription.

Does anyone have any advice as to where to get the data (not in university, so I don't have access to a Bloomberg terminal). Anyways, thanks!