Trading positions at Oil & Gas firms

dood · July 29th, 2008, 2:33 pm

Hi,With the current hiring condition being generally unfavourable, one needs to get creative about seeking out trading positions. An avenue that came to mind was the oil & gas industry with the usual suspects like BP, Shell etc. Does anyone have any experience in working on trading desks for these firms?doood.

diogenes · July 29th, 2008, 9:02 pm

Clearly, energy is a different game than equities, but the companies you mentioned are probably not the best to look for a good trading floor.

dood · July 30th, 2008, 9:34 am

my first impression is that the primary function of their desk would be to hedge the firm's position in oil/gas coming from their upstream production line. Do they market make?

rich7804 · July 30th, 2008, 9:55 am

diogenes,What are some of the best trading shops for energy commodities in europe?

diogenes · July 30th, 2008, 8:50 pm

Dood,I do not think I have heard anyone say that they make a market, but due to illiquid regions of the curve you could look at it differently. However, trading, both spec and hedging, around storage/generation units is pretty interesting from a floor quant perspective. Rich,My experience with shops outside the North America is limited to a couple of big names. However, these are based on smallish trades, too. So, I do not know. There are some other members on this forum that seem to have relatively deep knowledge of the European scene.