Exit Opps for Commodity Trading? (Oil/Gas/Power)

Like most things it depends on how good you are, where you are trading, and where your interests lie.

Many traders career goal is to grow their books and earn gradually larger cuts of their PnL. Most of the people posting on WSO with any knowledge of the industry likely fall in to this camp. Unlike many other high earning potential professions, the day in and day out of trading is interesting and satisfying. It is not correct to view it as a stepping stone to an exit opportunity because 1) all going well, you will likely not be trading physical until your mid to late 20's anyways and 2) trading should be viewed as an exit opportunity for earlier career-stage commodities roles.

A more appropriate question would be along the lines of "what are the exit opportunities for risk analysts and chemical engineers?". Point being is that asking this question is in a certain sense like asking what are the exit opportunities for people who work in PE or VC. That is to say that these are desirable and interesting jobs that most people in them have devoted a good chunk of their early career towards arriving at.

Now, people's interests change over time and trading roles at a lot of larger public energy companies are sometimes created as developmental opportunities towards bigger picture management roles. For example, you might have a high potential engineering guy/gal working on offshore projects or operationally optimizing a refinery configuration. If you think this person can develop into a leader for the overall business you might put him/her into a transactional role to help facilitate the mindset that there is more to it than just building a better mousetrap.

This sort of persons "exit opportunity" might be something like a management role on new asset development. Exit opportunities, if you want to view them that way, are going to vary person to person and undergo a huge degree of self selection based on the profile of the person in that trading seat. I think it's fair to say that mid-to-large sized companies engaged in the flow of commodities can be overwhelmingly complex and often have great roles in areas other than trading where having some trading knowledge can be a huge value-add.

Having said all this, I think the correct answer according to the majority of traders would be that it is its own exit opp, and that they want to grow both their book and their commission percentage.