1. Could you please describe your professional career so far? What were the most influential periods in your life? Why?
Since my career was kind of a roller coaster ride, it is hard to find a good starting point. When I was still in University, studying business development, I was lucky to have the opportunity to work as a junior consultant in a small firm that had a lot of trust in me. Which meant that at a rather young age, I was already able to contribute to big projects in a meaningful way.
Anyhow, after I got my bachelor’s degree, I moved up north to Denmark to do my master's in Operations and Supply Chain Management. Unaware at that time, I ended up living in the “Silicon Valley of power trading”. As life in Denmark is not cheap, I was looking for a student job and got one at Neas Energy as a Day Ahead scheduler. At this job I learned everything there is to know about power markets, but with time I shifted my focus from scheduling to analytic work. And so it happed that I switched my job as a scheduler to becoming an Intraday specialist, which was a rather special role since it combined trading and analytics.
Although I had a great time in Denmark, love was calling me home, so I switched jobs to work as a Senior Data Scientist for foryouandyourcustomers in Munich. This was a great experience since I had the opportunity to employ my Machine learning and analytics skills outside of power trading. However, in the back of my mind, I knew that my passion lies within the field of trading, which was what ultimately led me to become part of enspired.
Answering the second question is tough. I wouldn't label periods in my life as more or less influential. I simply think it is crucial to learn and grow from the experiences you make, no matter if they were good or bad.
2. Why have you decided to become a part of enspired?
As I mentioned in the first question, while working in Munich I realized that my passion lies within power trading. I started to reach out to some contacts, spreading the word that I was looking for job opportunities in that field. One of the people I was talking to was Zack Duffin- a big shoutout at this point- who introduced me to enspired.
enspired sounded intriguing from the get-go, as I loved their fully automated approach with a big focus on machine learning and sound technology. When meeting the team in Vienna everybody was just so friendly and welcoming that I had a great time chatting about power markets for hours. They made the decision to join enspired easy and I haven’t regretted it for a day.
3. What is it that makes the power market so intriguing to you?
I love the power market because, on one hand, it is totally explainable. In retrospective, you always know why prices went up or down and can determine which fundamental factors like renewable production contributed to price changes. On the other hand, when you are trading manually, it is a total rollercoaster ride. Are your forecasts correct? Is it the right time to open a position? Are other market participants overreacting to the latest developments?
Trading power is almost like playing a game of poker. You have to play the cards you have with incomplete information, but not only do you have to play the odds, you also have to play the (wo-)man. And it is the same with power markets - you deal with incomplete information while trying to be smarter than everybody else.
Additionally, there is one more aspect that is often overlooked when trading power, you can not win without your team!
4. Where you search for work inspiration? / newest information regarding your field of work?
The way enspired approaches power trading is quite unique, having a fully automated system including machine learning. so there is not just one field that you can take inspiration from. There are technical trading techniques, new trends in ML and the ever-changing market itself, so you have to stay on top of a lot of things. But essentially this is what makes my work so interesting, as new ideas for Algos or improvements can come from all kinds of sources and fields.
My best ideas never pop up when I’m sitting alone in some dark room, browsing through thousands of papers on the newest ML techniques, but while gathering around the coffee machine having random chats with people.