Free Site Registration

Breaking Through: Brynne Kelly, Part 2

Traders Magazine Online News, December 22, 2017

Kara Grygotis

For Part 1 of this interview between our VP of Customer Success Kara Grygotis and Brynne Kelly, see Breaking Through: Brynne Kelly, Part 1.

 

Kara: You’ve mentioned that your time trading electricity at Aquila was a key moment because the relationships you formed there created opportunities throughout your career. That leads into my next question: what do you do to get, network or exchange information, whether it’s from other traders or peers or an online source now? What’s your information-gathering mechanism?

Brynne: It has changed so much. In the early ‘90s and early 2000s, the exchange of information was fairly straightforward. It was at industry events. There were big shindigs, like Day of the Trader in New Orleans. That’s when you went and saw your peers in the market.

Before there were clearing banks, when you executed a deal through your broker,  you’d say, “Lift that offer,” and they’d say, “OK, you got them.” And you’d say, “Who am I done with?” Then they’d say, “Oh, you’re done with Enron, Joe Smith.” And you’d write that trade down. So you knew who all of your competition was in the market. Every trader was revealed to you.

So at these industry events, you were now meeting these people that you knew were the traders at the company. You were sizing them up as a human being because that was your counterpart. And you certainly would want to form relationships with them so that they wouldn’t run you over in the market.

From an external standpoint, getting information came from meeting your competition, initially. Then, of course, information came from the desk, the people who were physically talking to counterparties. You had people on the desk all day long calling up direct-end consumers and producers and getting information.

So now you start to have this whole network. Day-to-day, you were trying to figure out why markets were moving.

Kara: How has that evolved through the years?

Brynne: It evolved to online chat rooms like AOL Instant Messenger. It got quicker as everybody began chatting back and forth on IM.

At some point, IM took over, and then the central clearing took over—at that point, you no longer knew who your counterparty was because your counterparty was the clearing bank. Everything was anonymous, and it seemed like there were several years where that was kind of a loss. And then, all of a sudden, tools like Twitter and other social media came about.

Kara: How do those tools play into your current role or your current function as a trader?  Are they just superficially helpful, or do they offer something tangible?

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:

Comments (0)

Add Your Comments:

You must be registered to post a comment.

Not Registered? Click here to register.

Already registered? Log in here.

Please note you must now log in with your email address and password.