The CTRM Blog

Several months ago at E-World in Essen I was introduced to Mr. Rajeev Bhatt of eOpt Solutions. eOpt are based in Germany and describe themselves as “a unique products and services company, that offers smart solutions in the Energy Trading and Risk Management space.” Founded in late 2008 by a small group of energy industry professionals who had spent several years at the forefront of energy and technology, eOpt saw opportunities to provide specialist software tools and consulting in and around the periphery of traditional CTRM software. By focusing on areas where CTRM software can often be weak, Mr. Bhatt was confident that eOpt had found a good business opportunity.

CommodityPoint has issued a new Technical Briefing Note on Risk Optimization highlighting the Hyper Rig Risk Optimiser product. The TBN may be downloaded from the Reports and Articles page of this blog.

In an ideal world, running stochastic risk metrics such as full blown Monte Carlo Value at Risk (VaR), Earnings at Risk (EaR), portfolio stress tests or, other simulations, would be performed both on demand and in real time for complex commodity portfolios. Unfortunately however, this vision has proven to be elusive with most firms resorting to the use of overnight ‘batch’ jobs lasting hours to provide an accurate assessment of the day’s starting position and then utilizing parametric risk metrics during the trading day to approximate changes in position.

I attended, spoke at and moderated a panel at the Energy Risk conference in Prague on Central & Eastern Europe last week. The event was very well attended and there was some very good discussion around risk management and the CEE region – which recently has been a center of industry attention.

For me the speakers dinner was the most rewarding as I had a very illuminating conversation with David Kucera, CEO of the Prague Power Exchange about their progress in establishing an exchange in the Czech Republic and the impact of local politics on the initiative. Additionally, I discussed a variety of industry issues with the CRO and Head of Trading of CEZ, the Czech Utility and Trader, as well as with Vincent Kaminski – ex- head of trading at Enron and now a University Professor.