Anyone here an Energy Trader for an electric company? Just wanted to ask some questions regarding the position, qualifications, etc. I’d appreciate any feedback and info. Thank you
If you are on Twitter, Brynne Kelly (@brynnekkelly) sometimes provides electricity trading career-type info on her feed. There are also a few interviews with her on the net. She also recommends a book called SHORT, by Courtright McNeel, which is a novel about electricity traders that she says is very realistic.
It is a dead end job, don't do it. Electricity price tracks natural gas price. With the shale gas revolution and higher efficiency appliances, very difficult to make money and the entire power industry is in secular decline.
Sorry, but this entire comment is just asinine. The energy markets are an order of magnitude more complex than the financial markets, and they aren't going anywhere any time soon. Do you actually know anything about locational marginal pricing, the day ahead and hour ahead auctions, transmission rights and congestion pricing, capacity auctions...heck do you even know what an iso is without looking it up? Or is it all gas spark spread and the price of gas (you are familiar with spark spread?) and traders just sit on their hands all day in your world?
ISO is an independent system operator. I worked 2 years as an energy trader at a bulge bracket bank fyi. Tell me one large shop is that doing well and minting money, most places are downsizing for the past several years... spark spread is the key driver of volatility, without high enough volatility, customers have very little need to come to you and hedge their risks
I think our disagreement comes from the definition of energy trader. I work on the power marketer and EDC side, which is where the vast majority of energy traders work. They are all doing just fine, and in fact he number of deregulated energy marketers is proliferating at a crazy pace. These are all people who are trading energy they're actually delivering. That sector of the market is alive, well, and growing. I have no doubt that you're correct that energy trading jobs at bulge bracket banks or hedge funds are declining since I don't work there, although I'm not sure that's due to gas because when the power market was primarily made up of coal and nuclear they all had 20+ year energy prices locked in and relatively fixed costs so from a secular perspective volatility should have been lower. I would maintain that those were always a tiny minority of the electricity trading jobs, but fair enough that particular sector may be in decline.
See, we can agree to disagree. It is all in the details. Yes, coal and nuclear provide base load. In most markets, combined cycle gas plant are at the margin the majority of the time, hence the marginal price setters.