SA in Commodities, mid-office

I am spending my summer with a top 3 Energy firm which involves in commodities trading business, namely, power trading. My team supports the traders and the portfolio team. We work on daily forecast on regional power price based on physical analysis (i.e, power plants attributes, scheduled power outages, power flow).

I am from a target/semi-target school w/ 3.9 GPA in Economics and Math. Somehow disappointed that i found everyone from my group are Electrical engineers with masters or PhDs. So the work i am doing here now is not a perfect match for my skills, but still good for summer experience.

I am thinking of switching to front-office trading or portfolio management. What are your suggestions if I am hoping to leverage my SA experience to a FT position in S&T either here or in BBs?

Thanks a ton.

 
Best Response

"We work on daily forecast on regional power price based on physical analysis (i.e, power plants attributes, scheduled power outages, power flow)."

As an SA with the energy trading group of a BB, I can safely say that that's not ops, rather its middle office energy analytics/fundementals. As an SA, you're pretty lucky to be getting exposure to that sorta stuff. That's great experience if trading is your end goal and middle office work like that is a great place to get started. Knowing the fundementals driving these markets is invaluable experience. I can't see why you wouldn't be able to leverage it into a FT analyst offer at that company. Only reason you may have trouble going elsewhere such as a bank is because recruiting is going to be very minimal this year outside of SA class.

 

Are you a senior next year? As in operations which part of the middle-office you mean exactly. If you are working with PhDs I doubt you are working in scheduling or contracts. Is it risk then?

Are you using tools like energy velocity daily to create these forecasts? Are you creating mathematical models to predict how "outages in market 'X'" will affect how power trades on the hour and day?

Are you interested in Trading power? Short-term? Basis?

I think you may be doing a front office internship, you just are not fully sure how Energy firms work, it is alot more common for people from operations to jump to trading side in energy, especially physical.

 

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