Objectives

This course is to explore commodity trading and investing perspectives from the very short term trade to longer buy-and-hold strategies. The course considers the different motivations and strategies used by participants and also provides the underlying theory of the strategy and the actual practical knowledge for implementation.


Target Audience

This course is suitable for anyone with an understanding of the fundamental concepts of finance but wishes to know more about commodity trading and investment strategies. For persons with no or little background in commodities it would be advisable to first take the “Commodities – An Introduction” course, though there is no formal pre-requisite this basic knowledge is assumed.


Length and Structure of the Course

The one day course consists of lectures and case studies. The day typically consists of four 90 minute sessions with coffee breaks in the morning and afternoon and a lunch break in the middle. There is no exam for this course but candidates will get a certificate of attendance.


Course Tutor

Neil Schofield
Neil is a visiting fellow at the University of Reading and is a freelance training consultant. From 2001 to 2008, he was global head of financial markets training at Barclays Capital in London.  He was responsible for the design and delivery of a large number of seminars in a variety of different asset classes to many different audiences. Previous to that he was a director at Chisholm Roth training in London and has also held positions at Chase Manhattan Bank as well as Security Pacific Hoare Govett (now trading as Bank of America). Neil has over 20 years of experience in financial markets. In 2008, he published his first book “Commodity Derivatives” and his second text “Trading the Fixed Income, Inflation and Credit Markets” was published in 2011.  

He is currently co-authoring a book on Inflation entitled “Trading Inflation: Markets, instruments and strategies”, which is due for publication in 2013.