I had a briefing this morning from Contigo and one of the topics that came up in the discussion was the use of spreadsheets. It’s a truism that almost all trading firms utilize spreadsheets somewhere in their operations. A recent survey ComTech undertook for a study sponsored by Generation 10 into the use of spreadsheets showed that spreadsheets remained an important component in the risk management, operations planning, origination, and scheduling functions of the respondents businesses. The same survey suggested that spreadsheets were simply deemed faster and easier tools to use for certain tasks. They were also highly customizable and cost effective. Over the last couple of years, particularly here in Europe, we have seen quite a lot of new entrants into the market especially on the energy side. These new entrants are often smaller or their trading activities are just a small aspect of their business. These companies include Commercial and Industrials that consume a lot of energy or who have some small-scale generation capacity (solar etc.) that they wish to optimize. They can also include small hedge funds, trading firms and even smaller retailers/generators. Typically, these companies have and do utilize spreadsheets to run their entire trading portfolio.
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