Energy Trading learning path: everything to study, topic by topic

Structure of wholesale electricity markets including day-ahead, intraday, and real-time markets, nodal and zonal pricing, and merit-order dispatch.

Structure of wholesale natural gas markets including hubs, basis, storage, and the relationship between gas and power prices.

Standard energy products including baseload, peakload, blocks, and the contract specifications that define delivery period and location.

The roles of utilities, generators, marketers, traders, ISOs/TSOs, and exchanges in power and gas markets.

Scheduling physical power and gas deliveries, submitting nominations, and matching schedules with counterparties and operators.

Real-time balancing of physical positions, managing imbalance exposure, and the costs of deviating from scheduled volumes.

Acquiring transmission and pipeline capacity, managing congestion, and the impact of transport constraints on delivered prices.

Exchange-traded futures and OTC swaps used to hedge price exposure, including margining, settlement, and basis swaps.

Energy options including calls, puts, and structured options, volatility, and the role of optionality in physical assets.

Spark, dark, and locational spreads, and cross-commodity relationships used to hedge generation and transport economics.

Building supply/demand balances for power and gas, tracking generation stack, load forecasts, and storage levels.

Using weather forecasts, heating and cooling degree days, and seasonality to anticipate demand swings and price moves.

Building fundamental price models from dispatch, fuel costs, and capacity, and validating model output against the forward curve.

Constructing and marking forward curves for power and gas, interpolation across tenors, and reconciling marks with traded liquidity.

Taking directional and relative-value positions on fundamental and technical views, sizing trades, and managing P&L expectations.

Locational, temporal, and cross-commodity arbitrage, identifying mispricings, and executing low-risk relative-value trades.

Tolling agreements, full-requirements deals, and structured products that bundle physical and financial components.

Executing trades across exchanges, brokers, and bilateral markets while managing market impact and liquidity constraints.

Measuring portfolio risk with VaR, sensitivities (greeks), and stress scenarios across power and gas books.

Designing and enforcing position, tenor, and stop-loss limits, and the trader mandate that governs allowed exposures.

Managing counterparty credit exposure, collateral and margining, netting agreements, and credit limits.

Trade confirmation, settlement, invoicing, and dispute resolution across physical and financial transactions.

Market abuse rules, manipulation prohibitions, insider information handling, and conduct standards such as REMIT and equivalent regimes.

Transaction and position reporting obligations, data quality, and audit trails required by energy market regulators.