The CommodityPoint Blog

New OnLine Store

CommodityPoint has added an all new online store for white paper downloads, report purchases and book purchases. It can be found at The CommodityPoint Store

The Financial Crisis—A New ETRM Dislocation Event in the Making? by Gary M. Vasey

For those of us that started out working with natural gas marketing software in the early 1990s, the TRM software category has come a long way. The history of the category is one marked with periods of rapid growth followed by “dislocation” events as the industry went through significant changes under an air of uncertainty. The CommodityPoint ETRM dislocation model is explained in some detail in our book, “Trends in Energy Trading, Transaction and Risk Management Software - A Primer” (Booksurge Publishing 2006) but the concept is worthwhile revisiting under current market circumstances.

The CommodityPoint Dislocation Model

New White Paper Now Available

CommodityPoint has just released a new white paper titled "Breaking Down the Barriers to Holistic Risk Management" which is available for download at the UtiliPoint website. This is the third white paper released to date in 2009 and all are available for free download at the link posted above.

The Rising Need for Environmental Software Solutions

As the U.S. government inches forward on Federal climate change information, the more apparent it is that corporations must start looking seriously at their IT budgets to measure, track and monitor their carbon (and other emissions) footprints. A compliance driven environmental market will sustain the need for more environmental software applications. Indeed, the software industry is already creating new software applications in anticipation of these impending changes.

Measuring the Carbon Footprint

Why Build A Blog? by Dr. Gary M. Vasey

Last year UtiliPoint, undertook a snapshot survey to look at blogs in the energy industry. That survey suggested that, whilst 98 percent of the survey respondents knew what a blog was, only around one-third of them ever visited blogs in the energy space1 and around one- third of those told us that information from those blogs factored into their decision making. Amongst our conclusions from the study were that blogs were becoming an increasingly important source of data, information and opinion in the industry. However we also sounded something of a cautionary note stating that while blogs were certainly a growing source of industry opinion and information, the credibility of the blogger should always be carefully considered in accepting information and opinion posted on blogs. Some respondents to the study also made this important point.

Financial Traders Impact Price Formation?

Our recent study into Changes in Commodity Markets - Impacts on Traders and Software" suggests that the financial traders (banks, funds and so forth) are having an impact on price formation in commodity markets. Indeed, "Understanding the Factors Behind Price Formation" ranked in the top 5 critical business issues identified by traders in the study.

Two New White Papers

January has been a very busy month for Patrick and I. No only are we busy getting the commodities study completed, the new version of the ETRM book published and all the other things we analysts do but I have also been hard at work on two white papers. I am pleased to say that the white papers are now issued.

The first paper gets into the issue of risk management in today's commodity markets - quite a timely article now I have seen and analyzed the results of our commodities survey. The title of the paper is "Seeking Total Risk Management Solutions in Today's Commodity Markets". You can download it below.




New Vendor Perception Survey

CommodityPoint is undertaking an important survey into the perceptions of Trading & Risk Management Software vendors and products and would greatly appreciate your input.

The survey will take no more than 15 minutes of your time and has been designed for ease of response. Please do take this important survey. In return, UtiliPoint will provide you with a summary of results when this survey is completed. We sincerely appreciate your time and opinions.
Note: All responses will be kept confidential.

Vendors are asked not to respond, as vendor responses will be eliminated before analysis of the data.

We are seeking end user and system integrator views in this survey.
UtiliPoint appreciates your consideration.

To begin taking the brief appraisal, simply click on the following web link:

Survey here

Keeping Track of CTRM Software – The TRM Directory By Dr. Gary M. Vasey

Recently, UtiliPoint launched an online directory of Commodity Trading & Risk Management software vendors and service providers (www.trmdirectory.com) to accompany our existing Directory of ETRM Vendors and Products subscription service. The idea behind the online directory is to provide a single and definitive list of providers for those seeking CTRM software or services. The Directory features quite a lot of functionality to search for vendors and services by categories or by name and provides some basic information along with a direct link to that provider’s web pages.

Welcome

To the new CommodityPoint blog.