Commodity and energy trading runs on systems most people never see: ETRM and CTRM platforms that price physical deals, risk engines that re-run books overnight, scheduling tools that move real molecules and megawatts, and now a wave of AI agents promising to automate the middle office. This hub collects every Trading Narrative essay on that stack, written from inside the implementations rather than from a vendor's slide deck.
The through-line in these essays is a simple belief: technology choices on a trading desk are business choices. A CTRM that cannot represent negative treatment charges will misprice a concentrates book. A batch-based end-of-day process becomes a liability the day regulators approve 24/7 futures. An AI copilot is only as good as the deal data underneath it. We look at what actually breaks, what actually ships, and what desks should demand from their vendors before signing.
Expect deep dives on ETRM/CTRM selection and delivery, agentic AI in commodity workflows, market data infrastructure, surveillance and compliance tech, and the occasional teardown of why a promising platform died in distribution. If you work on or around a trading desk, in product, IT, risk, or the front office itself, these essays are written for you.
Some of what vendors sell is transformative, some is a thin wrapper with a new label. What is actually working on commodity desks in 2026 and what is not.
Anish PujariAug 27, 2026 5 min read
Everyone is chasing model headlines, but the durable profits are accruing to a quieter layer of the stack. Here's how to read the AI value chain like an operator.
Anish PujariAug 11, 2026 2 min read
The graveyard of startups is full of superior products that lost to inferior ones with better go-to-market. A field guide to the distribution advantages that actually compound.
Anish PujariAug 11, 2026 2 min read
Software leverage, global payments, and AI tooling have made the one-person, seven-figure business a repeatable playbook rather than a lottery ticket. Here's the anatomy of the model.
Anish PujariAug 11, 2026 2 min read
Why $15 billion in annual demurrage is a data problem, and how AIS, AI, and integrated CTRM are finally solving it.
Anish PujariAug 7, 2026 8 min read