Real Time Trader Interview

I work at a small power trading fund and have an interview at a generation backed shop next week.

My experience so far is completely prop and discretionary trading across miso, pjm, nyiso.

The reason I'm looking to move is that my bonus was underwhelming last year (5cents of my book) and although we have had a really good year I want to have alternatives if I get a less than stellar bonus.

Any inputs on how working at a utility/generation backed firm would be different from my current position.

Also, what kind of technical/power plant related questions should I expect given my commerce background.

Thanks in advance. Cheers!

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Working at a gen backed place will be much different. Depending on the place and role, you won't really be doing spec trading but will be hedging the power plants. You should understand how a power plant's costs are determined and how they bid into the market. Depending on the type of gen, you may want to familiarize yourself with fuel procurement. You should also learn a bit about the ancillary service markets and how to participate in those to maximize revenue. Having some options theory would be good. With volatility where its at right now in the power and gas markets, from the gen side, there are a lot of attractive hedging structures that would utilize options. Depending on the shop, you may also be responsible for nodal risk so an understanding of how to hedge out the nodal risk would be good as well.

A lot of gen owners and utilities will also have much different bonus structures. You may feel you got screwed last year, but moving to a gen owner could eliminate much of the potential upside.

Good luck on the interview

 

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