I'm starting at a physical shop soon and have been relaxing since summer vacation started. I'd like to start doing some work and wanted to ask your advice.
Supposing I have a month left to prep, what would you do in my spot (best bang for the buck)? I have already been keeping up with industry news, but haven't worked much on hard skills. Would the answer change if I specified oil/metals/ags, or would it remain general like work on Excel? Thanks all.
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I work in ags (ABCD), and I suppose this is another high level advice, but just keep an open mind. There’s so much to learn about physical trade, coming in with a false understanding of what you’re supposed to be doing might slow the learning curve.
Industry news is good, but once you start your job, it will become obsolete. A physical trader is “in the trenches,” your tradable information is learned on phone calls and conversing with your team.
Hope this helps, lemme know if you have questions.
Thanks, makes sense! I've never used Bloomberg before (I'm assuming it's going to be used whenever we're dealing with derivatives) and also am no expert in Excel/PPT (didn't do an internship in IBD/consulting/trading). Do you think there's time to pick up these skills on the job (perhaps stay after-hours to practice Bloomberg)? I'm assuming nothing I can do for Bloomberg for now, but I could definitely improve on Excel/PPT though.
Unless you’re running the hedge desk or in some sort of VP position, you’re not gonna touch a Bloomberg, sorry.
Haven’t opened PowerPoint once ever since I started the job. Who would you be presenting to, you’re trading!
Utilizing excel will be crucial, and your ability to think outside the box on how you can use it will be super important. None of it is insanely complicated, just using formulas and macros to plan out flows of grain/product, volume moved, seasonality of prices/margins, spreads to different locations, etc. Automation and analysis will be rewarded if you do it correctly.
do you know how to code in VBA and Python?
if not, then you should start ASAP. do free courses on youtube...then start doing projects so that you are able to do functional things
logical statement (if/else/then) loops (do while/until...for each) string and array maniplation read/write data from various sources (text file, SQL database, XML file hierarchical database, etc..) understand various programming object models...this will take time if you don't already know it...so better start sooner than later. you don't need a degree in computer science to program/write good code...just the time and attention to learn.
I don't. I'll get on it then!
If it’s ags I’d recommend reading the art of grain merchandising. It’ll give you a solid baseline understanding of physical trading that’ll allow you to hit the ground running.
Thanks. I've read most of the "primer" books across oil/metals/ags but this one I've always put off as it's $100. Will reconsider.
It’s worth the money but not absolutely necessary. It does a great job of consolidating a lot of information
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