Hi all, I'm a Freshman at a well known Ag School in California. I hope to one day become a physical commodity trader. After quite a few cold calls I've lined up two internships for the summer. One with a freight forwarder (NVOCC) who does some work with Ag products but mostly ships manufactured goods. They do about 120 million in business a year but are still relatively small. The other is with one of INTL FCStone's Ag derivatives brokerage/hedging groups. In both cases the internships are part of a multi year series with the expectation of me coming to work there full time. Obviously, after this summer I'm not locked into that and am totally free to intern for a different company.
I wouldn't get direct exposure to physicals in either internship but which do you believe is the better option? Any advice in general is also appreciated.
Thank you all in advance.
Purely on brand name INTL FCStone - as I have not heard of NVOCC (disclaimer, I am not U.S based - so my view is skewed, but it still implies the former is more of a global name).
Then use the base commodities knowledge learnt there to leverage an internship at a physical shop.
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the global perspective.
Just to clarify, a NVOCC is a non vessel operating common carrier. It's just a sub classification of freight forwarders in the United States. They basically are a shipping company that owns no ships and instead buy a certain amount of container space on ships every year at a discounted rate which they then broker to their clients. I didn't want to use the companies actual name for privacy reasons.
The brokerage. Not sure how much is really going to be learned at a freight forwarder.
+1 INTL FCStone - unless the forwarder has some exposure to charters. But as you said, they mostly move finished products, which means they specialize in container cargo's.
Posting to keep in my history.
FC Stone definitely. Going to be pretty tough making relevant contacts at the NVOCC.
Thanks for all the info guys, I've decided to take the internship at INTL FCStone.
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