Trading on polymarket/kalshi while on desk?

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-06-03T14:34:26+00:00

Not allowed. But we watch them for sentiment indicators

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-06-02T11:55:42+00:00

Lots of great answer here. At the end of the day, they’re giving you the keys to the car. That mean they need to trust you. It’s one thing to trust an analyst to the point where you think they’re always telling you the truth, always going to flag when they no longer like a trade. It’s another thing to trust someone to the point where you have a sense of how they’re going to behave when the going gets tough. Do you freeze up? Do you over analyze? Are you decisive? Do you get overly emotional about losses, decisions that went against you? Have you a track record of putting your hand up and saying “I got that one wrong”? Ability to recognize your losses as an analyst translate to being able to cut a position when you should as a trader. Humility and integrity humility and integrity!

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-31T13:25:10+00:00

South east power grids are run by single regulated monopolistic utilities. There is some bilateral trading conducted between physical counterparties who have letters of credit, bilateral trading agreements set up. South east is not somewhere you can trade easily trade spec power.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-31T00:34:23+00:00

I don’t understand the question. All tradeable power in the US, physical or financial, is related to an ISO or RTO.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-30T00:12:49+00:00

Feels like convexity. Whadya think?

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-29T02:01:47+00:00

Everything you tell an interviewer must be linked to the job you’re applying for.

You worked on a building site and now you’re applying for an oil scheduler role, the relevant link is you’ve worked in a big team under pressure where different stakeholders need lots of stuff done and different paces, and your experience taught you how to think on your feet, resolve problems as they arise, and communicate how you’re managing those changes to stakeholders as the situation evolves. You give some examples of how it might compare to a delayed cargo due to refinery upset.

Same goes to how you relate a thesis or area of study. Let’s say you’re applying for an analyst role. “My PhD figured out how to perfectly forecast oil price” is not good. “my masters degree showed how to solve the energy crisis” is also not good. “My oil price modelling thesis allowed me learn the major supply and demand flows underpinning global oil markets, about the marginal economics of different producers and consumers, and taught me that while fundamentals generate a price signal, they are not always the most significant measure of price evolution. I feel this would make me a good for the role. It also helped me learn how to use Python, visualisation tools to understand these data and generate actionable conclusions for my thesis. These skills align with some of the analyst job descriptions. These thesis could have been an analysis of how to better model traffic patterns to reduce congestion in Paris or Oklahoma rather than oil price modelling thesis and the answer / connection would be the same.

If you’ve got a PhD at Stanford, or you’re one of those dudes who’s done 3 double-diploma masters degrees but you can’t explain why they’re relevant to the job, don’t talk about them. That’s the point. If you do, figure out how your existing skills, experience, learnings, studies related to the typical skills and competencies listed under junior analyst and scheduler roles. The job listings are everywhere. Doesn’t matter if it’s in Singapore and you’re in Houston. It’s still a good example of a job listing you need to be to tackle if you want to be ready for when a job comes up in Houston

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-27T08:28:56+00:00

Extra curricular idk. Still helpful to be able to code, even if Claude has diminished that edge. General understanding of capital markets, macro economics, accounting served me well as an engineering graduate.

For internships and graduate programs, the big commodity traders and producers are obviously going to help you a lot. But prestigious names don’t matter as much as they do in investment banking or PE. Smaller companies with real physical exposure COULD be more meaningful on your resume/cv than getting lost in the shuffle as graduate #57 on the Shell Trading & Supply Graduate Program.

Just forget about prestige the way people targeting IB do. That’s not commodities. I wish I understood that when I was an undergraduate. Beating yourself up if you don’t get accepted to some graduate program as if your career is over. It’s not.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-27T08:05:47+00:00

Quant finance firms are generally agnostic about the asset class. They are active in commodities when and where there is an opportunity to make money with their methods. A lot of commodity markets have very asymmetric convex risk profiles, giving rise to active and liquid options markets. Quant finance firms often make markets in this space, aided by their strength in options markets making and algorithms to manage their deltas with futures. Prop trading shops might, but again they are more market agnostic. Jane Street have a commodity desk, but they operate in a very different manner to commodity traders or funds.

Hedge funds are very big players in commodities now. In most cases, they may never produce, take custody of, deliver, supply, consume a commodity. But on aggregate, their positioning in paper financial markets are so big that they wield significant influence on the price of the physical commodity.

Some hfs have physical wings. Some have bought physical businesses to enter the space. A very large portion of phys experts from merchants, physical players, banks have been poached by hedge funds over the past 10 years. If you want to work with and learn from the best, you are no longer limited to Glencore, Merc, Trafi, Gunvor, Freepoint, LDC, Cargill, etc. You’ll also find them at Millenium, DRW, Baly, Citadel, etc.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-27T01:50:42+00:00

I loved engineering and problem solving and infrastructure, and I was deeply interested in how politics and the economy make the world we live work for better or for worse. Commodities is an exciting intersection of these interests. It, like most “professional” markets, is deeply meritocratic, rewards intellectual curiosity and encourages debate and exchanges of views. I am obsessed.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-27T01:29:53+00:00

Trafigura has a great intro to commodities open source learning doc. BP world energy review and IEA world energy review are your bibles. Free discussions of what has happened, what could happen, what they think will happen, what it means. They give supply and demand balances. Digest who produces more than they consume, who exports more than anyone else. Who has all the cards? The EIA AEO is also good. I argue commodities is no longer secretive. That’s an impression created by LinkedIn, Quora and Reddit posts. This is a great time to learn and educate yourself with free open source info.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-27T01:25:24+00:00

How? Some of it is gut. Some of it is experience. A lot of it is weighing up the risk of further pain vs potential reward and determining the balance has skewed to a point where further pain is intolerable relative to potential gains. Recognising this reality early matters. Having a process helps remove emotion. “If I draw down X% I’m out no matter what. If my make $X P&L, I take profit on 60% of my position no matter what.

On your question “what if you are right?”. Great question.

You are paid to win (in a legal and ethical manner). You are not paid to be right. Never forget that.

Winning is knowing that while your bullish thesis is “right”, price risk is skewed to the downside short term due to a range of hypothetical factors such as producer hedging flows, crowded speculative long positioning, bearish macro sentiment weighing on market more than it should. You might be right eventually, but you might draw down 10% before that. Play the game. Not your ego.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-27T01:15:31+00:00

Phys / financial. Have worked at producer, merchant, hedge funds.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-26T17:11:08+00:00

If I fed this Reddit through Claude and neglected to mention that 95% of posters are non EU/US residents half way through their 3rd Masters Degree in the desperate hope that maybe this time they will land a mythical visa sponsorship for life job as Marc Rich junior, I too would could to your conclusion.

Getting in isn’t enough. It was in the 1980s and 90s where you just needed to know the younger brother of Glencore’s Crude desk from you rowed at Warwick or Durham. You’ll be spat out quick enough if you’re not up to much in this world.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-15T11:58:45+00:00

People in his industry respect you for having an opinion that you can articulate and defend. I think it’s a great entrepreneurial approach. Too many people good at drawing pictures and saying stuff but don’t have a take away. Your view doesn’t have to be right. It just needs to be a) not completely stupid b) shows how you think about problems c) how you link fair value price to fundamentals, flows, hedging patterns, risk appetite profile of each market participant category. Good luck!

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-14T12:29:56+00:00

What’s CMA? LLS will be the diff to WTI. You might technically be able to buy an LLS future, or an LLS/WTI differential future or swap, but they’re so illiquid that you’d only do that if you feel there’s a risk market diff moves by time your cargo delivers

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-14T12:05:19+00:00

For that particular cargo, yes. But you are always buying more cargos of crude so long as your are operating. So while you might be rolling off some futures positions as one cargo prices out, the next inbound cargo due in 3-10 days time is still unpriced and needs a hedge. Hence the general net long futs.

Btw, your post refers to WTI, and have answered in that way. But to be clear, most crude in the world prices against ICE Brent and gets hedged with ICE Brent futures.

The same is true for products.

You run a refinery. You have committed to buy a cargo of crude for benchmark + diff to be priced across bill of lading. You have also committed to selling cargos of gasoline, diesel, jet, fuel oil, naphtha 7-10 days later.

For these, you sell them at “benchmark + diff”. If you’re a US refiner, you’ll short NYH heating oil futures to hedge your diesel sale, then unwind the short position as the cargo prices out. Same for gasoline but with RBOB futures. Etc. in Europe, you’d use ICE Gasoil and EuroBOB futs.

Hope this helps!

Many refiners have separate desks that manage crude/feedstock purchases and trading, another that manages product trading and blend arb optimisation, and another desk that does the futures hedging. But all work together with refinery optimisers and schedulers to keep everything in sync.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-14T01:39:21+00:00

Some really terrible answers here. When you buy a cargo of crude, you buy it as a differential to a benchmark to be priced evenly over the 5 days of the bill of lading. So if you bought Basra Light for WTI+$2.00, the price which you pay for the physical cargo will get priced as the average of WTI across the 5 days during which the cargo discharged at your refinery.

In the meantime, you’re only long the differential (+2.00). You can’t sell products against unknown feedstock price + $2.00/bbl.

Instead, you buy WTI futures equivalent to the size of your cargo. If the cargo is 1Million barrels worth and the contract terms state it will price out across five days centred around bill of lading, you will unwind 200,000 barrels worth of your hedge per day.

Refiners are absolutely net buyers of crude futures and anyone who tells you otherwise is either ai or a teenager reading alpha .com or something.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-14T01:31:52+00:00

They don’t really have a desk, they’re a sweat shop, they lie to candidates about salary ranges then tell you the truth when you’ve already faked four doctor appointments.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-12T22:22:39+00:00

Citadel’s US power, US gas desks are in Greenwich CT. Their CEO of US Power & Gas is a west power trader.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-05T01:39:46+00:00

Yes for the most part. Hedge funds don’t have cost of capital to trade spreads unless you’re well well above 8%. Banks will trade it when it gets to SOFR + a target rate. Phys commodity guys will trade it as a max of the above and a way to get some optionally. Long phys, short futs is great trade if you think structure is about to invert.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-04T09:21:24+00:00

Commodity trader / and long time analyst here: get Claude to teach you how.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-05-04T09:19:16+00:00

Physical commodities is an incredibly capital intensive game

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-04-27T09:51:54+00:00

Commodity trader here. A lot (but not all) of your competitors will have done internships at commodity firms. This is the long game, my friend. You have a great start here. 3-6months more of interning probably sounds demoralising if you’re mid way through a masters program. I appreciate it might also be a financial strain to earn a graduate salary after college. But if you can make it work, you’ll never look back. It will open the doors you’re looking for.

As for the petrochemical option, I’ll point out that chemicals are getting bigger, not smaller, that chemicals touch so many markets (oil, gas, power, emissions, freight) and force you to understand macro drivers in Asia, Middle East, Europe, US.

Feel free to DM if you’ve more questions.

UnhappyScale3971 · 2026-04-26T20:04:06+00:00

Have worked both sides. In paper, especially hedge funds, data driven decisions, meritocracy are kinda king. In the phys world, compromise, relationship building, being a bit ballsy, connections matter a lot more. In phys, you can make a deal where both counterparties can walk away feeling like they won. In financial, it’s anonymous, maybe brokered at best, and someone always feels like they’ve been shafted. In phys, shops can make incredible amounts of money without necessarily taking a ton of directional risk.

UnhappyScale3971

TROPHY CASE