I was recently interviewed for the Commodities Now special CTRM supplement by Guy Isherwood, Editor-in-Chief.  I’m sure some of you aren’t readers of Commodities Now (by the way, it’s an excellent publication) so I thought I would make the interview available via the blog.

Guy Isherwood [GI]: What new trends have you noticed in the commodities industry?

Michael Schwartz [MS]: The United Nations issued a press release a few weeks ago stating that the world population, which is close to 7 billion right now, will surpass 10 billion by 2100. Many analysts had believed that population growth would stabilize at…

Pacific Carriers Limited, the global shipping and logistics subsidiary of Kuok (Singapore) Limited, has licensed Triple Point’s chartering and vessel operations software to manage supply chain cost and enterprise risk for its dry bulk commodities business.

Pacific Carriers Limited is a leading dry bulk operator with a growing fleet of product tankers, as well as offshore support vessels. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kuok (Singapore) Limited, one of South-East Asia’s largest commodity houses trading in scrap steel, agricultural commodities, fertilizers, and chemicals.

With continuing growth in global commodity supply chain operations, the ability for organizations to control the…

Triple Point Technology announced today the availability of Softmar Chartering and VesselOps™ version 1108R. The new release of Triple Point’s flagship chartering and vessel operations software provides shipping participants with real-time intelligence for vessel position and spot cargos. With this recent functionality, charterers are able to fix cargos and vessels ahead of competitors, decrease ballast time, and increase throughput and profitability.

The unmanageable volume of market communication has always been a limiting factor in the shipping business; charterers can receive thousands of emails a day. Business opportunities are often forfeited by sifting through data and losing analysis time. Triple…

Two articles that were published in the Financial Times (FT) on the same day this week caught my attention: “Prices soar as China goes nuts for cashews.” and “Wary investors pull back on commodities.”

So are commodity prices heading to new highs or are we on a path to a sell-off?

Nuts are one more example of a commodity that has hit record prices driven by the growing middle class in China.  China’s “appetite for healthier living among the country’s fast-growing middle class has stoked demand for nuts, sending prices of cashews and other snacks to record levels….…

There are any number of reasons why firms should take enterprise counterparty risk seriously, and manage it appropriately. A perceived failure will start investors, rating agencies and counterparties questioning an organization’s business processes and corporate governance procedures. The merest whiff of a rumor of default on a margin call, or over-exposure to a downgraded counterparty will start the wolf pack circling.

Failure to manage credit risk across the entire company can put organizations on a collision course with a market, that has shown little forgiveness for both real and perceived mis-steps, and regulators demanding greater transparency. It means that business…

Forget air miles – approximately 90 per cent of the world’s bulk traded goods are transported by sea, making shipping the lifeblood of the global economy. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that in 2008 the shipping industry transported more than 7.7 thousand million tons of cargo.

Advances in technology have made shipping the most fuel-efficient and carbon-friendly form of commercial transport available. And all current trends and trading patterns indicate that an even greater proportion of the world’s trade will be carried out by sea in the future. Without shipping, the transport of crude oil,…

As part of my series of interviews with Triple Point clients, I recently had the chance to sit down with Thomas Harvey, CIO and VP of Information Technology at The Energy Authority, to discuss industry changes and how they use technology to operate effectively in the energy marketplace.

Q: What are some of the major trends driving your industry and how do you see it changing in the next few years?

Thomas: The Dodd-Frank Act and what’s happening with the CFTC is the hot topic. We’re looking at our business policies and technical systems across several…

Turbulent economic conditions combined with stringent and uncertain regulatory reform are bringing dramatic changes to the face of energy and commodity credit risk. Don’t just cross your fingers and hope a catastrophe won’t happen to your organization.

Triple Point recently hosted a webinar on The New Rules of Counterparty Credit Risk and how you can prepare for potential economic & regulatory pitfalls with a flexible and transparent credit risk system.

In case you missed the live webinar, here is a link to download the webinar and view at your convenience.

In this webinar, Triple Point’s Vice President, Credit Risk Division, Dan Reid, discussed…

“May you live in interesting times,” is a traditional Chinese curse that could be applied to today’s energy markets.  There is a conflation of events consisting of rising demand, uncertain supply, infrastructure constraints, shifting global environmental policies, and changes in technology. Taken together, they create the conditions for a “perfect storm” in energy trading. So what are these events, and why should they concern us as a CM system vendor?

Firstly, let us consider the supply-demand balance of the main energy feedstock – oil.  In a number of market reports, including…

Last month I wrote about three pieces of legislation, one House bill and two Senate bills, crafted to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA). I went into an analysis of why the passage of these bills really weren’t that likely. Well, this time around it seems that House Republicans are trying a different tactic – delay.  Bill HR 1573, sponsored by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-OK, co-sponsored by House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-AL, targets to delay much of DFA’s Title VII, the highly contested derivatives section, until late 2012.

The truth of the matter is that this…