You bet, this place is full of close to communist idiots, and they mabye get their new left-wing goverment elected this year... then Im outta here for the next 4 years.
IF you unfamiliar with Nordpool then you dont have a quality working knowledge of the energy buisiness. Nordpool is truly the first successful power pool in terms fo trading, even more so then PJM. The money a successful power trader can make dwarfs the money that can be made trading knobs,fits ect. Plus the less mature the market the more opportunity to clean up
I don't know if you guys have ever seen how an electricity desk works but it is pretty wild. Electricity can get out of control. I watched an acquaintance of mine that had made the switch from a spread trader at the Cbot to an electricity desk. They watch Nat Gas all day as well. Stuff was wild. It cannot be bottled or stored ---so when there is a spike---there is a spike. I believe in the states everything is hourly traded. Or something like that, I cannot recall. I would confirm what artis74 is saying. In the case of my friend he is making 10x's the amount of dough (literally) trading that stuff. In fact, many guys that trade multiple markets (like yours truly) are finding that the energies are occupying most of the P section of the PNL.
there is no comparison that you can draw between any market and power. It moves in a non linear fashion, options vols on dailiy options can exceed 300%. A quarter on a a N/Q combo is 9000. Now when it gets realy squirley the spot market trades in $10-$20 clips. The profit potential is truly remarkable as is the loss potential.
I don't know of any non institutional traders that trade Power. Does anyone here know any? I know the Nymex trades power. But I don't know anyone that touches it. The guys I know watch Nymex Nat Gas and trade ICE (??). I don't were or who they trade derivatives through---I believe they are OTC. I have seen the link to the above exchange Norpool. It looks like it operates like a futures exchange. Fill me in artiz74 and put up some links. My friend was trading midwest region and the east coast in the US (I forget all the gibberish terms).
I'm not gonna say they the Pairco guy doesn't make good cheese, but I know a 26 yo personally who brought home 600K from a prop firm this year, after a 50% split. The guy bought himself a Jeep Liberty to drive, lives in a 1200.00 a month apartment, and pays his Mom's and sister's bills. The only thing he's bought is a Rolex and some Italian sport bike. He is also the most grounded guy I ever met...you wouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd of college students. I know...blah blah blah the point is that Trader's Monthly is a list of people they found and interviewed, not a list of the absolute best traders in the U.S., although some of the top traders are in there.
Great post - always good to hear about other highly productive traders. zippie, you and your friend should meet Darren Clifford. Those who've met or worked with Darren would think you were describing him - except for the fact that he doesn't wear a Rolex nor has an Italian sport bike... All around nice guy, sharp, multi-tasker, extremely focused and disciplined, makes time to help other serious traders, etc.
re: "electric power futures" ? and that "under-30 list" showed very, very few U.S. Equity traders.....mostly exotics, derivatives, interest rates, forex, etc.. Anyone pick-up on that ? Anyone notice that Trader Monthly has not shown ONE US Equity trader on the front cover yet ?