Hi guys,I would like to buy a book on commodities.What is the best book to enter in this subject ? (I'm an enginneer with a financial market specialisation and I would like to become a trader)thanks in advanceGuillaume from Paris

lots of people recommended commodities and commodity derivatives by geman. I found it useful - the introductory stuff can give you some useful info on market conventions - it doesn't get very technical but covers pricing etc.. but definitely a good introductory book if you don't know much about commodity markets

"Energy Derivatives - Pricing and Risk Management" by Clewlow and Strickland and "Energy Risk - Valuing and Managing Energy Derivatives " by Pilipovic are two very good books on commodities markets.

Commodities trading usually involves greater industry-specific specialized knowledge than other asset classes. For example, if I wanted to trade base metals I'd look up a university curriculum in mines and geology and see what they're reading and start there.

bogracer is right, you generally need to understand the market structure (remember if you are trading kerosene, say, and the futures price rises, the refiners will re configure their refineries to produce more kerosene, this will have an effect on the price of other products).Personally I don't like Pilipovic. Clewlow and Strickland and Geman treat commodities markets too much like pure financial markets, in my mind. I prefer Eydeland and Wolyniec, which is close to Geman. Also a book like "Electricity Markets" by Harris is good.As far as I can tell the thing to do is to work in trading for EDF/RWE/E-ON/BP/Shell for a few years and then get headhunted by an IB

QuoteOriginally posted by: bogracerCommodities trading usually involves greater industry-specific specialized knowledge than other asset classes. For example, if I wanted to trade base metals I'd look up a university curriculum in mines and geology and see what they're reading and start there.How do you start understanding base metals markets? The supply and demand seems hard to know.For NG trading, what are the most challenging problems?

The chapter in Geman about metals is not a bad introduction - it gives a flavour of the sorts of things you need to think about. Then, a year (on the job) of following what is happening in the markets will give you an even better feel for flows, the effect of news on the markets, etc. For natural gas, some of the interesting problems include weather dependency (hurrican dependency in summer - especially at the moment, and how cold the winter forecast is) - if you can build good weather models you'll have an advantage. Also, a lot of the banks are moving into physical gas projects - this raises some interesting issues that just trading futures and futures options don't raise. I strongly reiterate kkna9877's recommendation of Eydeland and Wolyniec. Also, there is a series by Shively on Understanding Today's Gas/Electricity business that are good introductions (though don't touch on the maths).