Hi everyone. I'm a commodities broker and work from my office that doubles as "home" a bit more than I like. My end of the business is both .. buying and selling. Probably my biggest challenge is sourcing - finding product for buyers and putting them together with reliable sellers, or finding qualified buyers and putting them together with reliable sellers. I see both sides of the fence.
There're tons of money to be made in the business, but it's definitely not for everybody. You need to do your homework on every product you broker. You need to know how to run a quick background check on both seller and buyer. You need to understand ALL of the terminology of the products you're working in, ALL of the terminology of shipping, and ALL of the terminology of finance. You have to be able to comprehend that when your bank double-dips on processing fees and grabs an extra 800K on a 288million deal, you're only talking about 27 cents on a hundred dollars. You don't go into a tizz over it, unless you want your contract cancelled.
Most of all, you need to be able to live with a schedule that more and more looks like 24/365. You have to talk to China, Turkey, England, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, et cetera ad infinitum; all those lovely places, and you don't have the luxury of only doing it on your 9-to-5 schedule.
There is zero time for surfing and playing, because you have deadlines to meet that are dictated by the marketplace, and you have almost zero control over that.
All in all, it's a rewarding business, and those rewards can be hefty, indeed, but you have to understand that just because you've been promised a commission, doesn't mean the deal will actually happen. Most do not. You will work your arse off for weeks on a deal, only to see it go to hell over a tiny difference in opinion over what the product is worth. Or worse, you'll have it stolen out from under you from some fraudster with a slick line of BS who knows how to lie better than anyone else in the world, takes your customer with promises of cheap prices, and strands you while he rips off everyone in sight. Been there, done that.
The moral is, home business can work out, but if you are thinking about entering the arena of commodities from your dining room table, forget about it. Don't try this at home. The difficulty of completing any deal is in logarithmic proportion to its apparent sweetness.
All the best,
Bill Whedon
Independent broker
Call me if you need Portland cement, urea, sugar, or anything at all.
Website:
http://www.advertrix.com or find Advertrix on tradekey or alibaba.