The desk years

I started in the early 2000s, when the European energy market was still being built. I traded gas and power at Shell, learned the curve, learned how to size up, learned what happens when a position goes against you and the desk head walks over. Then I moved to Gazprom Marketing & Trading in London, trading on one of the most active books in European gas at the most volatile time the market had ever seen.

The single most useful thing I learned in those years: the market is a story being told by inventories, weather, geopolitics and positioning, all at once. The job is to know which voice is loudest today.

The data and intelligence years

After a decade on the desk, I moved into the data side of the industry. As a senior executive at ICIS I helped build the price assessment and analytics products that the desks themselves rely on. Then at Refinitiv (now part of LSEG) I led the global energy business: the terminals, the data feeds, the analytics that sit on every energy trader's screen. Hundreds of people, eight-figure budgets, every region.

That role taught me what the desk years didn't: how the entire information architecture of a market is built. Who pays for what. Where the asymmetries live. Why certain pieces of information are priced in instantly and others take weeks.

Why this show, why now

I left the corporate world to do something simpler. The financial information industry is built to serve professionals, and the price reflects it. Meanwhile the audience that needs this knowledge most, the analyst trying to break in, the engineer thinking about energy as a career, the person trying to build wealth without paying a wealth manager 1%, has almost nowhere to go.

Markets to Freedom is built for them. The daily show is the news you'd hear on a desk before the open. The articles are the long-form work I used to write for institutional clients. The free show and the newsletter are the entry point. Insider, the paid layer, launches later in 2026.

If you understand markets, really understand them, you have an asset that compounds for life. That asset is what Markets to Freedom is here to build.

What I believe

  • Markets are knowable. They are not random. They are not rigged. They are complex, and complexity rewards patient, rigorous work.
  • 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.
  • Financial independence is a byproduct of competence, not a goal in itself. Get good at the work. The freedom follows.
  • Energy is the master market. Every macro story (inflation, rates, geopolitics) runs through energy first. Learn it and you understand everything else faster.

Beyond the show

I still consult selectively for institutional clients on European energy and carbon markets. I sit on a couple of advisory boards in the energy transition space. Most of my time, though, goes into Markets to Freedom: the show and the writing.

If you'd like to know when the deeper paid product launches, the Insider waitlist is the place to start. If you'd just like to follow along, the free Sunday newsletter is the easiest way in.