Iron Ore Trading?

Met this guy at my gym and turns out he does iron ore trading at a major company and offered to have a chat with me in a week. I'm interested in commodities / trading but most of my research has been with oil & gas. What are some publications / reports / primers I can read so I can show this guy I'm not a tool and actually took the time to learn about his industry and respect the time he's taken to have this chat with me? I've read commods demystified by Trafigura, would be cool to get something like that but specifically about Iron ore or maybe a related commodity.

Huge thanks in advance for anyone who can give me some answers :)

12 Comments
 

how did you strike a conversation with this guy at the gym - assuming he's like 10+ years older whilst you're still in college

 

Crossfit Gym and we were in the same class. Our gym also offers a free 15 min sauna / ice bath after each session. So we were both just chilling in the sauna and he asked about why I was in the country (my accent is American, I was in an SEA country at the time). Told him I was here for uni, he asked what I wanted to do, told him I liked commods / trading, he mentioned what he did, struck up a convo, finally he offered to have a convo with me about it next week.

 

Cant send the link because I have no bananas but mining (dot) com has an iron ore specific section and Reuters also has a metals specific news section too. Not exactly what you are looking for but figured it was worth the mention.

 
Most Helpful

Speaking as someone older, it’s better for someone new to just demonstrate curiosity about something vs just rattle off a bunch of facts that they learned the night before or create leading conversations which are designed to validate their knowledge.  Use your background research to frame good questions, not to impress with your knowledge

 

I would recommend you check out metallics.org. It’s the website for the IIMA (International Iron Metallics Association). Almost every metal has a trade org dedicated to it and it’s useful to take a look at their resources. Also see if his company is a member and ask why or why not, he will most certainly appreciate this.

Just keep in mind if you don’t have metals experience you should focus on polishing your general physical understanding. I recommend just deep diving into each section of commodities demystified to get a slightly more granular picture of it.

 

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