I'm a college student interested in commodities markets, and I’m trying to understand what commodities traders and analysts actually monitor to get a picture of market state, identify what's going on. I interned on a rates desk previously, but am now curious to how commodities markets concretely work. I'm mainly interested in oil, but open to learning anything.
Apologies in advance if I'm asking the wrong questions, please correct me.
Beyond headline prices and curves, what goes into analysis:
* What derived metrics do desks care about (spreads, basis, shipping, inventories, etc.)?
* Are these mostly vendor-provided or internally built?
* What gets checked every morning vs ad-hoc?
* Is most of this excel driven, or do firms build their own flows.
* How are new ideas generated? Do desks rely a lot on research providers or just use it as a sanity check.
Both paper and physical perspectives are useful, I'm not set on anything. Not looking for trade ideas