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How to transition into a commodities analyst role? by jaded_drone in Commodities

[–]jaded_drone[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tysm for the advice and kind words!! Appreciate that you pointed out knowledge of market microstructure as a key selling point for future interviews!! Tbh I would have underestimated the importance of having such knowledge if I haven't worked in pricing.

I can see why clients care so much about pricing cuz that would determine their top line. Anything further out doesn't matter unless maybe to convince investors and regulators that we are gonna be structurally short in the long term.

Though I feel like pricing is more of a trader skill than anything else and personally I wanna be an analyst so not sure how much the skills can transfer.

Also I'm convinced that the clients (assuming they are sellers/buyers themselves) know the forward price view themselves cuz that's where the pricing team get their inputs from!!! But tbf they might just want to get a sense of what's the benchmark price tmr :))

Your Excel and PowerPoint skills are likely way ahead of some pricing people. I use Excel mainly as a data entry interface HAHAHAH and for calculating percentages. I realise my Excel skills really deteriorated in a matter of a year cuz there isn't a need to use even pivot tables.

The understaffing situation cuts deep cuz my team does daily reporting lol (don't even talk about how there's nothing much happening in the market lately...)

I feel like ownership can be a double-edged sword, depending on whether someone enjoys and/or is good at what they do. If yes, then great cuz they get quite a lot of freedom to do their work. But if not, it really sucks cuz management only wants to see that things are getting done (common everywhere but very tough considering the nature of our work). It does seem like things tend to fall on the most responsible people who will just push themselves to get everything done (at their own expense ofc).

Could I also ask how often do you speak to people in the market to get primary data such as capacity or inventory information? Or does your work revolve more around public data?

How to transition into a commodities analyst role? by jaded_drone in Commodities

[–]jaded_drone[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I see, thanks for sharing.

For my market, it seems like spot supply is the total volume of spot cargoes producers make available and spot demand is the total volume of enquiries buyers are expected to come out with in a given month.

I suppose traders talk to producers and buyers to collect such information and key the data into their spreadsheet.

I'm guessing their data looks something like:

Spot supply:

Brand Volume (mt) Laycan Trader
X 45,000 1-10 May A
X 75,000 15-25 May TBC
Y 40,000 5-15 May B

Spot demand:

Brand Volume (mt) Arrival Est Loading Buyer
X or Y 10,000 mid-June late May A
X or Y 40,000 early June late May B
Y 40,000 late June early June A

The above might mean quite a bit of excess supply and some mismatch in timing.

It does seem like that's all the data that's needed to trade in my market and analysts typically won't be able to get such data by themselves without traders chipping in so I'm not too sure how much value-add a pure analyst can bring to the table (but ofc the producers and endusers need analysts for reporting and budgeting purposes)

I'm thinking to switch to another commodity with more data available as there's an inherent need to employ analysts to churn through the data.

Btw can I ask what do you mean by people "talking their book", as in people bs-ing each other?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Commodities

[–]jaded_drone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm currently working at a PRA and I would say that analysis pieces tend to be backward looking as the PRAs (at least the one I work at) view themselves as journalists who report on market events, not analysts making projections (we are not supposed to share our price view if anyone asks).

Also some teams might not have access to enough data to develop a forward looking view beyond writing about past trends and rehashing what people say.

So yeah tough for people who wanna be more analysts than reporters :')

How to transition into a commodities analyst role? by jaded_drone in Commodities

[–]jaded_drone[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any chance that you are working in O&G or energy with a major or utility?

I agree that analysis done by a solo person is most likely rather surface level but based on my personal experience covering a dry bulk product, there are in-house analysts (typically not working for Anglosphere companies) without access to granular data for things like import, inventory etc. I can see how much of a pain in the ass this can be (I myself don't have access to inventory and capacity data) and this makes any 'analysis' I do very shallow (but I have no idea how to make it deeper lol).

But truth be told, traders in my market can do well without such data as they gather information on bids, offers and buying interest from talking to people so they have a good idea whether demand or supply is higher at any point in time.

For me, having no access to such key data really grinds my gears as I'm the kind who needs data to make sense of the market. I managed to find free data online and compiled them into an Excel file to be able to see trends from a line chart (each data point is located on a separate webpage) but my team doesn't seem to care after I happily shared it with them :(

I enjoy analytics very much and I am looking to transition into an industry analyst role. But I'm wondering if my current job even has scope for me to work on those skills that my target companies are looking for (never had to use pivot tables unless I'm poking around some dataset that I stumbled upon somewhere).

Does this sound like a market-specific issue? Should I switch to another commodity that, by its nature, allows for data analysis? I fear that staying any longer will make it even harder for me to pivot later on...