Damien

Crazy Stories From the Commodity World (And the Six Traits You Should Look For in Any Partner)

December 18, 2025
, Blog, Commodity trading, Youtube

If you’ve been in the commodity world long enough, you eventually stop being surprised.
You develop a strange emotional callus — because the stories you hear, and the things you see, slowly get… normalized.

Let me start with a few gems.

There was a manager who relocated an employee from Europe to Asia, only to fire him one month after he arrived.

Another guy finally got promoted to head of desk.
On the day of his promotion, two core team members quit on the spot, saying:
“I’ll never let that guy give me orders.”

And of course, the classic: traders earning half a million a year…
Still taking kickbacks left and right like they need lunch money.

These aren’t exceptions.
These are stories you hear on a Tuesday between two coffees.

So here’s the question that every sane person eventually asks:

Are commodity traders just terrible people?
Or does the job turn them into monsters?

And once we answer that, I’ll tell you the six traits I now look for in any business partner or senior hire — traits that would have saved me a lot of money and pain in the past.

The Stories That Make You Question Everything

Some stories are so insane that if I hadn’t heard them from first-party sources, I would have dismissed them outright.

The Stolen Shares Story

A senior executive managed to steal shares from an overseas employee.

When I first heard it, I said:
“Impossible. You can’t steal shares from a private company. Not legally, not structurally.”

Then he explained the loophole he leveraged.
And yeah… turns out you can.
If you’re creative enough, and your morals are flexible enough.

Completely insane.

The Numbers That Didn’t Match

A friend of mine worked for a well-known trading company.
His head of desk asked him to report the department’s full numbers to the CFO:
stocks, cost breakdowns, P&L — everything.

Later, when the company released its financials to banks,
he noticed the numbers didn’t match. At all.

He brought it up.

The head of desk said he’d talk to finance.

One week later, the head of desk quit.

My friend asked why.

The answer:
“I’m not working one more second for those crooks.”

And this wasn’t a mom-and-pop shop.
It was a respectable, sizable firm.

So the big question remains:

Is it nature?
Or nurture?

Nature vs. Nurture in Commodity Trading

International commodity trading is a brutal environment.

Margins are thin.
Competition is fierce.
Information asymmetry is violent.
Regulators, cultures, legal systems — everything varies country to country.

And layered on top of all that is the psychological pressure of the market.

If you’ve never lived it, it’s hard to understand.
It’s like having a ticking bomb permanently inside your skull:
tick tack, tick tack…
and you don’t know if — or when — it will explode.

Only a very small subset of humans thrive in this world.

You need:

Extreme ambition
Type-A competitiveness
High stress tolerance
Charm and intelligence
Relentless work ethic

People like that succeed everywhere.
But when they discover commodity trading, they often fall in love with it.

Why?
Because it’s the ultimate game.

Fast.
Complex.
Global.
Barely regulated.
You can make insane money.
And there’s a simple scorecard: your P&L.

Up = good.
Down = bad.
No excuses.

But here’s the catch:

When you take these high-powered personalities
and expose them for years to a world where corruption, lies, and political dysfunction are normal…
they start to see humanity differently.

You witness governments where populations survive on $1/day,
but officials only care about filling their own pockets.

You watch colleagues pocket an extra $250k a year through “arrangements”.

You participate in tenders you were never meant to win.

You work in markets where lying is considered a form of intelligence.

If you don’t have a solid moral compass,
you slide.
Fast.

The Flip Side: Why My Closest Friends Are Traders

Here’s the paradox.

This environment filters severely.
If you can survive in it without losing your soul,
you’re usually an exceptional human being.

You understand that:

Good people sometimes do bad things.
Bad people sometimes do good things.
Environment explains a lot — but it’s not destiny.

I’ve seen people born with nothing,
in the poorest corners of the world,
rise with unbelievable integrity.

These are the people I trust.
These are the people I build with.

The Six Traits I Look For in Any Business Partner

These six traits came from expensive lessons:
employees who failed,
partners who betrayed me,
and one person who literally stole both my money and my company.

Learn these now so you don’t learn them the way I did.

1. The “Third-World Jail Test”

Ask yourself:
If I were locked in a third-world jail for no good reason, could this person get me out in two days?

Do they have the drive?
The intelligence?
The resourcefulness?
The guts?

And would they even try?

It’s a surprisingly effective filter.

2. Their Energy Is Contagious

After talking to them, are you:

Energized? Motivated? Ready to move?
Or
Drained? Bored? Ready for a nap and a McDonald’s?

High performers radiate energy.
The others suck it out of the room.

3. Evidence of Past Entrepreneurship

It doesn’t matter if it was small.
It just needs to show initiative.

Selling gloves from China to Brazil at 19.
Starting a local festival with EU grant money.
Organizing events, flipping cars, freelancing — whatever.

Entrepreneurs leave fingerprints.

4. No Excuses — Only Delivery

You can summarize most people into two buckets:

Those who find excuses
Those who find ways

Always choose the second group.

5. Lifelong Learning

If your company grows, your partners must evolve with it.

All my best partners are obsessed with learning.
I see it even inside SACA:
experienced traders take the course not because they “need” it,
but because they want to catch what they might have missed.

It’s a universal trait among top performers.

6. A Real Moral Code

Not a religious code.
Not a societal code.
Their own code.

If someone doesn’t know their principles —
if they bend every time pressure hits —
they will betray you.

You need a partner with a spine.

Even if their moral code is “mafia-style”…
at least it’s a code.

The Common Thread: High Agency

All six traits come from one overarching concept:

High Agency

High agency means:
You set your direction.
You take action.
You take responsibility.
You don’t wait for permission.
You shape your life — you don’t let life shape you.

Successful people in commodities (or anywhere else) are all high-agency.

Low-agency people are the ones who DM me every week saying:
“Damien, big fan — any tips on entering the industry?”

I tell them: “I have 100 videos on YouTube. Go watch them.”

They reply:
“Yeah, I’ve watched most of them. What else?”

Well…
I also have a whole Academy built to help you enter the industry.
You know it exists.
You know it’s the next step.