Natural Gas Analyst Path to Trader
Hi all, earlier this month I started as an analyst on a natural gas trading desk for a large IPP. I work directly with traders and work on market fundamentals. I am pretty early career and I had a couple of questions:
(1) Is it worth trying to make trader at first, rather than switching to the prop-side at a trading house/fund as an analyst first? Not sure where on the industry prestige/recognition scale my company is, but it is one of the heavy hitter US IPPs (in the >10 fleet GW range of companies)
(2) Is there a point to trying to get into TDPs at this point now that I'm an analyst on a trading desk? Or is it sufficient to perform well and try to go for internal move to trader?
(3) I think down the line I want to trade power and not gas. Do a lot of moves from gas to power happen and have transferrable skills, besides the obvious coupled nature of their markets?
(4) Is it okay that I never had a scheduling background? Seems on LinkedIn that most gas traders scheduled at some point in their careers. It doesn't seem like analyst to scheduler is an upward move at my company, but also don't want to get pigeonholed as an analyst.
Thank you!
(1) Is it worth trying to make trader at first, rather than switching to the prop-side at a trading house/fund as an analyst first? Not sure where on the industry prestige/recognition scale my company is, but it is one of the heavy hitter US IPPs (in the >10 fleet GW range of companies)
If your goal is becoming a trader try and do it anywhere you can where your margin for getting fired is lowest and learning opportunity is highest. "Prestige" doesn't mean anything other than what the size of your book is and what your possible bonus payout is/can be.
(2) Is there a point to trying to get into TDPs at this point now that I'm an analyst on a trading desk? Or is it sufficient to perform well and try to go for internal move to trader?
No not really, you'd just be placed in a similar analyst/ops/risk type position or worse something even further away from trading. Yeah just learn as much as you can and perform well and hope for an opening.
(3) I think down the line I want to trade power and not gas. Do a lot of moves from gas to power happen and have transferrable skills, besides the obvious coupled nature of their markets?
If you want to trade power you're going to want/need to know gas, especially on the term side. They do happen, yes.
(4) Is it okay that I never had a scheduling background? Seems on LinkedIn that most gas traders scheduled at some point in their careers. It doesn't seem like analyst to scheduler is an upward move at my company, but also don't want to get pigeonholed as an analyst.
You don't need to schedule to trade paper gas, might be a harder sell if you want to trade physical too. If you're a good analyst you should eventually learn the different physical aspects that drive things in the market. It definitely helps just with understanding the fundamental makeup of everything, constraint points, different meters/hubs, what happens if there's an outage somewhere etc. I've met some very good nymex traders that have actually never touched a physical molecule before but were very good analysts and then paper traders.
This is true. I have met a few old guys doing NYMEX who have never touched physical. They did have a strong background in fundamentals though.
Not sure what a NG analyst does. Maybe contracts? idk but scheduling isn't difficult tbh. Once you are there, you can learn it in 3-6 months. There are things that could be new but it isn't difficult, just operational.
I completely agree with you. The technical side of things—plotting charts, working with the trading platform, and basic technical analysis—is purely operational. It’s a routine that, when repeated daily, becomes second nature within a few months.
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