Need advice: Two RT Power Trader offers — which is better if I want to land a prop seat?
Hey all — I’m a recent grad with no prior energy experience, and I’ve got two offers for RT power trading roles. Long term, my goal is to land a seat on a prop desk, so I’m trying to figure out which opportunity better positions me for that path.
The first offer is with a well known power marketing agent on an East desk. It’s a structured environment with strong training, great mentorship, and a reputable name. That said, it’s a service based model, so they don’t take on risk, and the trading isn’t PnL driven. Although, I do know that lot of people have used this route to eventually land spots at commercial shops.
The second offer is with a small municipal utility on a West desk. It’s less formal in terms of training, but the team has been clear that I’d be contributing to PnL sooner and would have more direct exposure to put on risk. It feels like more of a sink or swim environment, but with the potential to build trading intuition faster.
So I’m trying to decide: do I take the safer, more structured path with strong development and brand equity, or go with the more opportunistic role where I’d be closer to actual risk from the start? Given that my background isn’t in energy and I’m just getting started, I’d love to hear thoughts on which role might better set me up for a future in prop trading.
Appreciate any insights from folks who’ve been down either road or seen how these paths play out.
So I'm speaking out of my experience in ags so what I'm gonna say might not be that related to you. When I got out of school for my first gig I got a pretty good decent slug of risk to deal with from our deck and I basically washed out initially. Lot of issues between myself and the market I was working, but when I think back to what happened the insurmountable issue was that I worked for a human being who almost went out of his way to avoid answering my questions and it made work and learning 10x more difficult. My point is that risk is fantastically fun to run (sometimes), but who you will be working for will be a major factor in how well you can learn. Even if you are the one running the show for your market, having someone willing to answer questions and critique what you're doing would be huge in my opinion.
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east desk will be better to learn if you move to a prop seat....west incredibly tough to trade from a prop perspective in terms of liquidity. you'd want PJM or ERCOT for the liquidity to support meaningful prop risk taking imo...
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