25 years inside energy markets. One mission outside them.
What Markets to Freedom is
Markets to Freedom exists to help people build greater freedom through better decisions. That starts with understanding markets, companies and money. The live weekday investigation is where that work happens in the open today.
Across 25 years in energy and markets, the moments I've enjoyed most were the ones spent lifting the people and businesses around me: delivering on the broader strategies my team and I owned, helping a junior teammate find their feet, mentoring people from my own team and beyond, helping a desk see a market more clearly and a business make a sharper call. Markets to Freedom is that same work, done in the open, for anyone who wants it.
There is no shortage of opinion about markets. What is rare is watching someone work a question out in front of you: what the evidence says, what is being assumed underneath it, what is genuinely uncertain and what would change the answer. Plain spoken, on the record, from someone who has actually run a book.
Shell trading arm. Grew from graduate to UK and French day ahead and prompt power trader, managing interconnector capacity between the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Gazprom Marketing & Trading. Followed the Head of Trading from Shell to build the European power trading business from scratch across seven markets. Delivered £5.5mn P&L in the best year. Anticipated the compression of gas-fired generation margins in Europe and consistently advised the parent company against buying generation assets exposed to that decline.
Thomson Reuters, then Refinitiv. Global Head of Power, Gas, Carbon and Coal. Over seven years, grew the business from 1,800 users and $23mn revenue to over 5,000 users and $50mn revenue.
ICIS. Engaged hydrogen teams at major energy companies to shape product for a nascent market. Then kept on as a senior executive supporting major energy accounts (Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Uniper, RWE, SEFE) on data, analysis and forecasting.
The desk years
I started in 2000 as a graduate at STASCO (Shell Trading & Shipping Co), the trading arm of Shell, on a two year rotation. I spent my first six months learning trading back office operations before moving to Shipping & Procurement, where I delivered a special project collecting HSE data for the fleet of oil tankers chartered by Shell and assisted on securing a coffee shop partner on site in the Shell Strand office. When our bunker buyer went on maternity leave I stepped in for three months, procuring fuel for our tankers and spending millions of dollars with every deal, my first taste of live markets. Following my third rotation as an energy analyst, I was pulled off the scheme early by the Head of Power, Gas and Carbon Trading. With European energy markets still nascent, I supported the business in negotiating around 60 European Federation of Energy Traders (EFET) agreements to build bilateral over the counter (OTC) counterparties for physical power trading and worked with technology to develop Zainet, making sure we captured positions accurately so we could profitably close out with the day ahead exchanges and send them to the Transmission System Operators as required by regulation. With no charting software at the time, I supported the team in building technical analysis charts and broader fundamental market analysis before becoming a junior trader focused on UK and French day ahead and short term contracts, managing interconnector capacity between the UK and France along with Germany and the Netherlands.
Alongside my senior trader at Shell and our operations lead, I followed the Head of Trading to Gazprom Marketing & Trading (GM&T, now SEFE or Securing Energy for Europe), where we set out to build power trading from scratch. GM&T at the time ran speculative gas trading, transportation and marketing, plus oil hedging on index linked gas contracts. Power, LNG and other energy commodities came next.
At GM&T, critical efforts included supporting the Risk Management Team on their daily reports, working with business analysts on the internal ETRM system and partnering with legal and trading capabilities to launch power trading across the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and many other geographies.
During seven years at Gazprom I met the annual individual and team P&L targets set, giving the business confidence to add further traders and analysts focused on power markets. Other major successes included building deep relationships with power market participants as their access to market, coming back from £1.5mn down as a power team in the first two months of 2007 to exceed team and individual targets, delivering £5.5mn in my best year and collaborating with our retail business in Manchester to build and manage a power retail book to 1TWh before leaving. Throughout that period, the power team consistently advised our parent company against buying gas-fired generation across Europe. That recommendation was based on our view that growing renewable generation would compress gas-to-power margins, which subsequently remained depressed for years.
The commercial leadership years
After a decade on the desk, I moved into the data, analytics and forecasting side of the industry with Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv (now LSEG) as their Global Head of Power, Gas, Carbon and Coal. Over seven years, I was responsible for a $23mn a year business within a $200mn commodities division, inside a market leading $12bn news, data and analytics group. Inheriting 1,800 users and building on the foundation of the acquisition of PointCarbon (a leading power markets forecasting firm in Norway), my team and I grew the business to over 5,000 power, gas and carbon traders globally and over $50mn a year in revenue. This was alongside the excellent Commodities leadership growing the business to over $300mn in the same period. Most of my team's growth came from a global gas strategy where we invested in expanding the European gas analytics team, created a new global LNG analytics team, deepened relationships with data partners and enhanced the product. It was here I learned deeply how to lead a business within a matrix organisation, working across every function alongside a talented team as we scaled the segment together.
Most recently, at ICIS (Independent Commodity Intelligence Services), I supported the business in engaging hydrogen teams at major energy companies to understand what we should build to serve this nascent market. I then worked as a senior executive growing relationships with major energy accounts such as Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Uniper, RWE and SEFE, ensuring they were getting optimal support from us as a partner for their data, analysis and forecasting in energy markets.
Why Markets to Freedom, why now
The financial information industry is built to serve professionals and the price to access it reflects that. Meanwhile, people outside professional markets often have far less access to the research, evidence and analytical tools used inside them.
Markets to Freedom is built for anyone who wants to understand markets, companies and money well enough to make better informed decisions for themselves. Experts, analysts and traders may also find the investigations useful, but they are not the primary audience.
Each weekday I take one question worth answering and work through it live: the evidence, the assumptions sitting underneath it, what remains uncertain and what would change the answer. The point is not to hand anyone a conclusion. It is to show the work, so more people can do it for themselves.
What I believe
Knowing markets helps in every walk of life. To support the people you love. To build a strong position now. To build towards the future you want. To go after the things you actually care about. That is what I believe. It is why I do this.
Track records matter. If someone is teaching you about markets, ask what book they ran, when they ran it and how it did. That includes me.
Agency comes from understanding, not from being told. Someone who can read the evidence and see what it rests on is in a stronger position than someone following a call, whoever made that call.
Energy is a foundational market. Many of the biggest stories in inflation, geopolitics and economic growth run through it. Understanding energy often makes the wider picture easier to read.
Other work
Alongside Markets to Freedom, I'm open to advising selectively with power, gas and carbon trading companies, AI data centre businesses and commodity intelligence services on commercial strategy, go to market strategy and special projects.
If you'd like to collaborate or have a short-term project where I could add value, reach out at rukes@marketstofreedom.com and let's chat. Any new collaboration will sit alongside my work on Markets to Freedom.
