The Commodity Trader's Playbook

Geopolitical shifts, sanctions and redrawn trade routes are reshaping how crude is bought and sold. Disruptions around a single route can move prices sharply and redirect flows within days. Sourcing and pricing models built for a more predictable market now carry materially greater risk. This masterclass will take participants through how importers and trading desks respond: diversifying supply, building and running hedging strategies, and adapting to new benchmarks and settlement patterns. It will work through the practical capability a desk needs - reading the market rather than simply executing against it, managing price and supply risk together, and knowing when to hedge, switch benchmark or change counterparties. Trading capability is becoming as important as procurement scale. The session will focus on the tools and judgement traders/ importers use to protect both supply and margin as routes, rules and prices keep shifting, drawing on real examples of how desks have navigated recent disruption.