What is the function of the metals trader in the modern industrial sector? What is your reason for being? What are the knowledge and training to become a good trader? Unfortunately it is impossible to accurately answer the questions above also because the most important skills a trader are a mix of creativity and methodical at the same time. All this of course creates many questions and curiosities to those who keep this business from the outside.

Nevertheless, there are some skills that a trader can not miss:

- Logistics expertise, to learn about the problems of shipping, customs, transportation contracts, etc..

- Financial skills, to learn about financial markets, metals and currencies, hedging of risks, etc..

- Technical skills / metal, to know the user's needs, the chemical and physical properties of metals and therefore their value, etc.

- Administrative skills, to learn about contract management, credit management, etc..

- Business skills

A TYPICAL TRANSACTION

It is normal for a trader to buy the metal with only a dim idea of ​​where and to whom to sell it. By a strange law of the case, the best buying opportunities occur whenever there is no client available to buy! Also by the same law, the supplier needs an immediate response, claims that you purchase the entire lot of goods with payment by letter of credit to the first presentation of the documents of shipment, of course in the local currency of the supplier. Good opportunities are always in the company of good complications.

The trader, who knows the market well, has only time to check the variable costs of the transaction before concluding the deal promptly. At this point the chain of events begins and proceeds as follows.

Currency hedging and risk cover metal boat rental (or part of it) and opening of letter of credit. The good part is because the seller has delivered FOB, letter of credit is negotiated and this time it is the trader who finances the entire operation. The goods arrive at the port of destination and is unloaded in the warehouse after customs clearance to be reloaded onto trucks. The entire load is too big to be sold to a single customer, so they are made numerous sales of smaller lots and closed the covers of risk. By comparing the purchase price of the metal with the price charged to customers, some may wonder at the huge difference and would think that the trader has great margins, but ...... the costs to complete the task are numerous and reduce the gross income in a net gain much more content.

Of course the above is a gross oversimplification of what happens in the real world, where unexpected always intervene to test the capabilities of all traders, especially his creativity in solving unexpected problems.

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