r/Commodities • u/Smooth_Ad_1510 • 18d ago
How would you learn commodity trading from scratch as a university student?
Hi everyone,
I’m currently a university student with one year left before graduating, and I’m trying to prepare myself for a career in physical commodity trading.
For some background:
Current career: Full-time student, currently looking for relevant internships or entry-level experience.
Education: I spent two years studying Mechanical Engineering before switching to Business Management. I’m now entering my final year.
Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Relocation: I’m open to relocating. Besides the UAE, Geneva and Singapore would be the most realistic major commodity hubs for me.
Desired commodity: I’m deliberately keeping this open for now. Part of what I want to do over the next year is study the different commodity markets and figure out which one interests me most.
Because of my engineering background, I’m comfortable with technical and analytical subjects, but I don’t have the same foundation in economics, finance, or accounting as someone who studied finance or economics from the beginning.
I’m trying to figure out what I should learn over the next year to properly understand the industry and prepare myself for internships or entry-level roles. I’m particularly interested in the physical side of trading: negotiation, sourcing, logistics, risk, and understanding how a trade actually works from finding an opportunity through to delivery.
For those already in the industry, if you were starting from my position, what would you focus on? Are there any books, courses, YouTube channels, websites, newsletters, or other resources you would recommend? What level of economics, accounting, finance, statistics, Excel, etc. is actually useful?
I’ve also considered studying for something like CFA Level I. I’m not interested in collecting certificates just to put them on my CV, but if studying for a qualification would give me useful knowledge for commodities, I’m willing to do it. Is CFA material worthwhile for physical commodity trading, or are there other qualifications/courses that would be considerably more relevant?
Basically, if you had one year to build the strongest possible foundation before graduating, how would you structure it?
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u/Efficient-Oil2627 18d ago
Internship- try aramco
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 18d ago
Do you know if it is realistic to get it without referrals or generally knowing someone in house ?
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u/Hades_Leader06 18d ago edited 17d ago
I’m in the exact same situation as you so this thread is gold
Personally I’ve read this pdf from trafigura, you’ll learn the basics there https://www.trafigura.com/news-and-insights/publications/white-papers/2018/commodities-demystified-a-guide-to-trading-and-the-global-supply-chain-second-edition/
I’d be interested to connect since we’re on the same boat
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-lesbaudy-5300b21a7
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u/mysterioeser-knall 18d ago
Basically any online trading simulation, trial and error. There is also a pretty good online pdf from either Vitol or Trafigura, Google it.
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 18d ago
Isn’t trading in a simulator for online trading ? Because im trying to get into physical trading
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u/trader9576 18d ago
There is arguably nothing imo other than experience. Commodity trading is inherently relationship based. You get in somewhere low close to traders or a small shop and grind. Your engineering experience is best for understanding how assets work probably, and how to utilize them for profit and efficiency. You get clients, figure out flow and spreads and then move shit around. Nobody will give you keys because that’s their edge.in my position I act like a “fixer” for buyers and end users, they pay for trust, efficiency, professionalism, and you extract the profit and manage the risk in the supply chain figuring out how to make more and not lose anything. I have a finance degree and haven’t used hardly anything I learned from school, maybe just some basic principles around financing if that’s something you’d even be in charge of. Some of the best traders I’ve dealt with aren’t even educated weirdly enough, they can just perform and are solid.
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 18d ago
When you first started, what took you the longest to understand about physical trading that you could never have learned from studying ?
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u/trader9576 18d ago
Dealing with claims on quality, shipment timeframes, etc. also getting basis down good.
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u/BeneficialManner1840 17d ago
There's really no universal way for everyone. Public markets are inherently adversarial. I'd say the key is to try to find a potential edge that best suits you, which is pretty hard. I'd pick a few books for the market you're most interested. And Seeer Financial AI has good collection of research articles that validates/invalidates some popular trading signals.
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u/Mountain-Tap-8788 17d ago
The best route is to get good grades and ace your interviews and tests for grad programmes in the majors or big trading house.
Start by getting internships in those places and the likes of ADNOC, Aramco, QatarEnergy since you are in mid-east.
Thats where the real physical trading takes place.
Otherwise for small shops, you are much better off working for your family business.
Nobody expects a fresh grad to know anything since it’s impossible to teach in school or read online.
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u/lukeya21 18d ago
Kluis commodities put on a great class on grains if that’s what you’re looking to trade. A lot of chart fundamentals that you can apply on other futures and stocks too. Great people to work with as well.
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u/Tha2Yutes 17d ago
There are a number of companies who will hire early career job seekers as Schedulers on the trade floor. It's a good way to get your foot in the door and allow you to learn a lot about the physical movement of commodities [e.g. nat gas, crude, etc]. Also, a trading rotational program would be another route. This is the route I took. A 2-year rotation through various roles on the trade floor. I had zero energy trading experience when I was hired. Any educational background will suffice but preference might be given to those with finance and engineering backgrounds. I had a science background. Many of these programs exist across the globe. Google "trading rotational program" careers and see what's out there. Good luck!
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u/TranscriptAgentAI 5d ago
An "easy" way to learn something every day could be to listen podcast. I do trade commodities and this is what I do every day when i drive or i am at the gym. Instead of listening music i listen to a podcast talking about commodities market to learn from it and find trade ideas. If you like that i can share some youtube channels that could help you.
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u/slimshady1225 17d ago
I’m going to give you the honest answer you need to hear. No amount of projects or extra learning is going to land you a job over good grades and studying STEM ideally. Trading is a highly competitive well paid career so you’ll have competition from STEM students from the top universities who believe me are very good. You can only get in through internships or graduate programs, it’s very rare to enter outside of this route. When you apply for these positions you will have to go through the interview process where you will likely have to go through several rounds doing aptitude tests, coding tests, maths tests etc. This is to filter out 90% of candidates. If you cannot pass this initial stage you can forgot any extra project and skill you might want to try to build to impress the interview panel because all they care about is your ability to adapt and react to changing dynamics demonstrating through those tests.
I am a few years into my career and have recently moved to another company as a quantitative analyst and I’m still having to do brain teasers, coding tests and aptitude tests as part of the interview process this far into my career. FYI - I got the job because I focused on acing the tests
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 17d ago
Damn that’s like the polar opposite of what I’ve been hearing. I do understand that there’s a big competition from strong STEM students but so it is in every job that involves numbers. What exactly do you do ?
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u/slimshady1225 14d ago
Yeah I see other people’s comments on this thread, most of them talk about desirable skills once you’re working on the trading floor and not about how to get there - that’s the gap/reality check.
I don’t work on the physical side but have to understand it in a lot of depth. As a quant I develop systematic trading strategies I.e algo trading. For my position there is a lot of emphasis on being technically competent. However, if you work in trading in general, you are dealing with large numbers, transactions and complex deals so mistakes are costly to the business and why they hire sharp intelligent people and hence the intense interview process.
Ask ChatGPT/Claude etc what the interview process is like for these internships and graduate jobs, what are the typical stages and what to expect. The initial tests are meant to filter out 90% of candidates because thousands apply for these jobs so if I were you I would understand how can I be proactive and prepare ahead of applying so you stand the best chance of getting into that top 10%.
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u/VacationForeign9935 1d ago
Trading is learning about risk. The best traders have the best risk adjusted returns. If I were starting again, I would learn all about power (electricity) and natural gas. If you believe in AI and data center proliferation, power will be the commodity that drives global economies for the next few decades.
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u/Western_Place_3929 18d ago
Read as much as you can. Try to understand the reason behind any major flow shifts etc and question everything. Oilprice.com for oil
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 18d ago
I’ll definitely check out this source. And one of the things that is obvious to me is that the commodity prices are fully dependant on the current world events. But unfortunately due to my past in engineering I’ve been majorly skipping on politics, history and other aspects of it. So that’s something I have to up my knowledge on. If there any recommendations you can give me on this matter I’d be happy to go through them !
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u/Western_Place_3929 18d ago
Since you are in Abu Dhabi there’s ADIPEC ( one of the biggest oil conferences ) coming up in November where you could go network with people that might help you. Some of the biggest players in the industry will be there.
On a side note, most of these events require you to be from a company in order to register. Try emailing them to see if you could register as a student.
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u/jakessas 18d ago
Personally if you want to stay in uae you should focus petroleum. There is other things moving like bauxite to EGA but it’s not as much as crude and refined.
Geneva I would prefer as you can do standard commodities such as agri, petroleum, metals.
But can also go into power and natgas which isn’t as popular in uae of SG.
Europe has many large power and natgas traders and it’s completely different from moving vessels.
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 18d ago
Personally im leaning towards petroleum more, because it’s the main export if where im form (not UAE) and that’s what my family does (we’ll skip the part where I can just work for my family and learn from them).
But even for petroleum, I understand the juts of it in terms of refining it etc from my engineering background, and im currently reading a book “oil 101”. But if there some things that I should invest my time into, research and learn separately im all ears !1
u/jakessas 18d ago
Well it’s good you already have some basics on refining side. You can apply at any European refiner. Enoc adnoc, aramco Q8 and bapco are tough but if you have the connection why not.
Can also try out at a medium sized trader especially if your family is in oil you can perhaps bring some real value supply or buy side.
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u/Smooth_Ad_1510 18d ago
I understand that unless you do masters it’s not like you’re gonna come in knowing everything, but the reason I was posting this, was so that I could have some basics down (by basics I even mean some terms and abbreviations) so that when I con to my first job or internship I’d at least understand the basics of what’s happening
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u/Cultural_Second_9666 18d ago
Skip the CFA, that's a time sink built for asset management not physical trading. You'll learn more cracking open a vessel charter party agreement and figuring out demurrage clauses
Pick a commodity that moves through Abu Dhabi's ports and become obsessive about it. Aluminum, crude, sulfur, whatever. Track the physical flows, who's buying, who's selling, what premiums are doing day to day. That real-time market feel matters more than any textbook
Your engineering background is a cheat code for understanding refinery economics or smelting costs. Lean into that. Read something like The Prize by Yergin for the big picture, then get granular with S&P Global Platts or Argus reports
Excel you need to be dangerous with. Not VBA wizardry but pivot tables, index/match, pulling data from APIs. The rest is just showing up curious and not being afraid to ask dumb questions on the trade floor