Oil Trader career progression
Was wondering what a typical career progression would look like from apprenticeship -> Trader in a trading house like trafigura for example. Heard that you finish the graduate program in around 2 years then work for 2-3 years in ops until you land a job as a junior trader? But at the same time I heard trafigura and other trading houses only hire traders externally. Was very confused on the whole situation.
How many years do traders have to work on average to land a trading seat?
Ideal timeline at a major:
Year 1-3: TDP- 3 rotations
Year 4-6: Junior trader- trade cash, execute trades, cover other traders, handle niche markets
Year 7-X: Senior trader- many people stay at this level for the rest of their career, and this is where you see exits commonly happen toward hedge funds, Traf/Vitol
Year 12-X: Book leader, management path starts to happen for high-performers who want to go down this route
Year 15-X: Start to see retirements around then for people at the very top who want to get out early, or people who have other interests and enough cushion to feel secure
Do trading houses like traf/vitol have internal promotions to trading seats or do they exclusively poach from majors?
Do trading houses like traf/vitol promote to trader internally or do they exclusively poach traders from oil majors/utility? Trying to understand whether it would be a better option to join the trafigura graduate program or an oil major instead and what the faster track to a trading seat is.
Don’t have an inside view onto that, all I can say is that they hire quite often externally.
very rare to move up into a trading role at those shops and not worth betting on those odds
Do you have any ranges for progression in comp and hours? I just think it would be interesting to see.
Hours average about 50 hours a week, maybe 60 if just starting out, plus checking up on emails/chats/prices outside the office. Not sure honestly on graduate pay these days but would think 100-200k all in first 3 years, 200-400k a few years after that, and then massive variance of 200-mystery number past year 7 or so.
Thank you!
For bonuses, what have you seen as the usual incentive structure? Is it usually a small % of the book or are there other things at play
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