How to manage a futures/forwards natural gas trading book?
So I will be joining a small prop shop based in Germany as a gas trading analyst. The plan is to develop me as a trader in 18 months time. Firm assumes that it will take at least one year for me to build analytics for the newly setup desk. But thats not the case. So I will appreciate if someone could point me out to resources where I can gain some practical skills and get ready faster..... Please don't tell me to gain numeracy and learning to perform under stress....thats some vague advice and not helpful...I want to know if there are some practical resources to learn about managing small capital of 50000 USD to trade natural gas futures and forwards(Liquid European contracts). There has to be a book which has some thumb rules for managing your own speculative book....I came across excellent blog by an ex SIG trader but his content is based on options market making....
Edit: I think i responded to few comments with a bit of a cocky attitude. MY INTENTION WAS NOT TO DISRESPECT ANYONE. I IMMEDIATELY APOLOGIZED FOR MY MISTAKE TO THE PERSON ....NOW I DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT SOME OF YOU ARE TRYING TO DO HERE? WHY ARE YOU RESPONDING 24 HRS AFTER AND SAYING THAT I HAVE ATTITUDE PROBLEM WHEN I APOLOGIZED WAY BEFORE MOST OF YOU EVEN READ THIS POST?
Can you send the link to that blog?
https://moontowermeta.com/bet-sizing-is-not-intuitive/
First hint all european nomination and storage data is public.
I dont think you understand my question....Europe had plenty of gas this year and still between july to november there were price spikes due to different reasons....fundamentally these reasons should not matter because storages were full. There should have been no price appreciation due to maintenance in north sea or strikes on Australian LNG ports.....incident of short squeeze were totally unjustified....so I have no interest in knowing right price of physical natural gas. I want to know what to do when market is being paranoid.....i want to know what to do when i know the right price of gas but market is being irrational....how to identify short term arbitrage in gas market....I want to know what 10% price move in different direction can do to my book....handling margin calls reading VaR report etc....
This is an idiotic response to someone trying to help you. No one on message board is going to teach you the details of knowing the psychology of the market and how to anticipate or react every move. Partly because its impossible and partly because that's not his job. He's telling you the data to understand the issues and you blow it off. Someone needs to really reset your expectations.
We all learn by doing, so go actually do the work and don't expect people to tell you how to do your job unless they are being paid to do that. Also, I'm pretty sure there's a TON of books out there on trading natural gas, maybe you should read one. Trading isn't easy and nothing is handed to you. If you want to succeed, #1 is adjust your attitude and expectations. There's no shortcut to success in trading. If you can't do that, let me know when you get fired and I will recommend you to a bunch of my competitors. It's always good to have easy money in the market.
'.i want to know what to do when i know the right price of gas but market is being irrational....'
How are you going to know the 'right' price of gas? Maybe some inventory and noms data would help???
You don’t know the “right price” the “right price” is just the price of the commodity at that time. There is literally no right or wrong price.
How can you trade TTF with a 50k usd capital? Is this a legit shop? If the capital requirement is correct you can barely trade a minimum clip on the front month (5mw), of a few monthly spread clips and good luck with margin calls. You are asking to learn how to trade, you can't learn it if you don't try it, so start eventually with a fake book to test strategies (ie enter dummy trades in an excel blotter and monitor daily pnl/var/margining etc and test your strategies in this way). As everyone else suggested having a fundamental snd is key and judging by the arrogance of your answers I am not sure you really know how to build one but i might be wrong.
whatever happened with the other person was between me and him....we both sorted it out and I apologized....
Give me a heads up when they give you that mandate so I can tell anyone I know to avoid that desk - serious attitude issue here.
Unless you're parachuting in with an analytics stack ready to go it is going to take quite a while to build it from scratch - fundamental models take time , tracking ships properly takes time , everything takes time and since a 50k book can barely trade 30 lots of month ahead ttf futures at a 10x leverage you'll barely make enough to cover the cost of a single data provider so you're definetly going to take a while to build all those flows from scratch.
90% of what you've asked has nothing to do with gas- margin calls, VaR reports are things you will learn on the job. There's nothing more you'll learn in that regard from a book than you'll get off Investopedia. Besides anytime someone brand new pulls up beside me claiming they know how to do things after reading about them its almost always wrong.
Chill out before they decide not to make you a trader at all.
This is a great example that shows how quickly a bad rep of any junior guy spreads IRL. No matter how many times OP apologizes, either in the main post or in the replies, everyone on this forum knows who you are and will recognize you from this thread when you post on WSO. You're labeled the cocky/arrogant new guy, and that will stick on to you until you start earning money for your desk/running it.
A cursory glance at his comments on other posts would show it’s not an isolated incidence - hence why I commented. Even the apology had attitude lol
Yeah this bloke seems a bit deranged, especially w/ that all caps edit lol
You have to be Balkan with these responses fr
Bro remember this. Your reputation in the market is like a sheet of paper. Once that is crumpled no matter how hard you try you cannot straighten it. Take it on the chin and calm down. You made a mistake. But expect it to stick around until you actually show that the mistake is not who you are. All the best.
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