Career development
Break into commodity trading
Top trading houses, investment banks, hedge funds and energy majors recruit from the IE network. We help you get in front of them — prepared.
Target firms
Where the industry hires
Physical trading
Trafigura · Vitol · Glencore · Cargill · Gunvor · Mercuria · Koch · Louis Dreyfus
Investment banking & markets
Goldman Sachs · J.P. Morgan · Morgan Stanley · Barclays · Citi · UBS
Hedge funds
Citadel · Millennium · Point72 · Brevan Howard · Balyasny
Energy majors
Shell · BP · TotalEnergies · Chevron · Equinor · Repsol
Career paths
Roles in commodities
The industry offers far more than trading seats — here's the map.
Physical & derivatives trading
Execute trades across oil, gas, metals, agriculture and power. Manage positions, optimise supply chains and arbitrage global price differences.
Operations & logistics
The backbone of physical trading — chartering vessels, managing storage, scheduling cargoes and making sure millions of tonnes arrive where the trade says they should.
Commodity finance & banking
Structure trade finance, commodity-backed lending and project finance for resource extraction and infrastructure — where banking meets the physical world.
Research & risk
Analyse supply-demand fundamentals, geopolitical risk and market microstructure to inform trading decisions — increasingly quantitative, always in demand.
What we build
Skills that get you hired
Market knowledge
Physical and financial markets, supply chains, freight and the geopolitics driving trade flows — from practitioners.
Pressure-tested judgment
Live trading competitions — the experience interviewers ask about and most candidates don't have.
Warm network
Direct access to professionals through our speaker events, treks and partner clubs in London and New York.
Technical toolkit
Financial modelling, risk analysis, derivatives pricing and data-driven market research.
Start here
The commodities reading list
What our members read, listen to and follow to build market intuition before the first interview.
The World for Sale — Blas & Farchy
The definitive history of the commodity trading houses. If you read one book before an interview, read this.
BlogStreetwise Professor — Craig Pirrong
Market structure and the economics of commodity trading, from the professor who spoke at our February event.
PodcastOdd Lots — Bloomberg
Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal on supply chains, freight, energy and everything in between.
IndustryTrafigura — The Economics of Commodity Trading Firms
The classic explainer (co-written by Pirrong) on how trading firms actually make money.
DataIEA Reports
Oil, gas and electricity market reports — the supply-demand numbers everyone in energy quotes.
WeeklyOur Weekly Market Brief
The club's own research — price moves, drivers and what to watch, every week on LinkedIn.
Ready to launch your career in commodities?
Join free for recruiting prep, events and industry connections.