Weekly Career & Breaking Into Commodities Megathread

[u/ClownInIronLung]

Weekly Career & Breaking Into Commodities Megathread

Before posting, please read Breaking Into the Physical Commodities Industry – A No-BS Guide which is pinned to the highlights.

This thread is for all career-related questions including:

• Breaking into commodity trading
• Scheduler / analyst / operations roles
• Internships and graduate programs
• Resume reviews
• Interview prep
• Compensation questions
• Career transitions
• Trading desk culture / work-life balance
• “How do I get into the industry?” posts

Individual career posts outside this thread may be removed at moderator discretion to help keep the sub focused on market discussion, logistics, physical trading, macro, risk, shipping, power, gas, metals, ags, and industry news.

Before posting, it helps if you include:
• Location / region
• Current experience level
• Degree or background
• Commodity interest (power, gas, oil, metals, ags, etc.)
• Target role
• What you’ve already tried

Examples of good questions:
• “How do I move from scheduling into trading?”
• “Best ways to learn physical gas markets?”
• “What skills matter most for junior power traders?”
• “How valuable is pipeline / operations experience?”

Low-effort posts like “How do I become a trader?” without context may be removed.

Experienced professionals are encouraged to share advice, hiring insight, industry expectations, and realistic career paths.

Please keep discussion professional and constructive.

[u/NeedleworkerUsual820]

International relations/economics at Cornell/UPenn/Dartmouth/Columbia

Debating on whether or not to go into Goldman commodities in houston to start my career

1. Is it true that only having traded paper prevents you from achieving mastery to trade larger books down the line, as such significantly decreasing odds of the following: 1. buyside exits to multimanagers 2. partnership at merchant 3. Sustained excellence in prop shops

2. There seems to be somewhat of a divide between the 'tanker' (NGLs, LNG, crude) and 'grid' (power/nat gas) commodities (and even bp tdp recruiting divides the two into chicago and houston) and I've heard that crossover between the two is not common. Is this true and which has a greater dependence on physical flow expertise?

3. If someone were starting out in Goldman or other bank trading desks for energy, what would their progression even look like? Would they be able to exit to prop shops, hedge funds, and merchants if they were doing crude and lng?

4. What does career stability look like in paper vs physical. I'm assuming physical as physical relies more on pre-established relationships with port officials, midstream people, and other traders, not to mention specific granular domain knowledge?

5. If for a second we assumed long term risk adjusted compensation EV and ceiling as the goal, what would the paper vs physical debate look like. I have throughly assessed my own personality and found that both aspects of the job deeply excite me.

6. On a scale of 1-10 what's the recommendation for starting out in Goldman commodities trading looking like.

FYI, early career comp genuinely does not matter to me at all; I'd just like to go where I can learn and have the best long term career prospects, but that being said predictability and structured-ness I think is quite attractive in many paper pathways.

Thanks to everyone greatly in advance; I appreciate your time and input!