Cashing in on Covid: the traders who thrive on a crisis

When we think of those lurching moments last spring when it became clear that much of the world, not just one or two regions, would grind to a halt, for most of us it is anything but a fond memory. But the traders of Glencore probably remember the time differently: they saw it as an unprecedented opportunity to cash in.

Anticipating a global slowdown, they bought up all the space they could to store oil, including tankers capable of holding 3.2 million barrels. When the markets caught up with the scale of the pandemic, the price of oil dropped to zero and below, and in they swooped. They took the oil for free, stored it at sea, and sold it a few months later. While we worried about our livelihoods, Glencore’s traders made $1.3 bn trading energy.

This is just one of dozens of tales which fill Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s swashbuckling history of a profession most of us would write off as unbearably boring: the life of a commodities trader.