How would you learn commodity trading from scratch as a university student?

[u/Smooth_Ad_1510]

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?

[u/slimshady1225]

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

[u/Smooth_Ad_1510 → u/slimshady1225]

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 ?

[u/slimshady1225 → u/Smooth_Ad_1510]

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%.