This should be another fascinating year, oil is still the most critical of commodities and its price is still unforecastable for most of us. The task of forecasting oil becomes ever more difficult thanks also to a veritable arms race of superior intelligence and fast accumulating mountains of ‘real time’ data that are brought into play by traditional and new players across oil markets. In this session, our panelists will discuss and opine on direction of prices, factors to consider and risks. Specifically, for instance, expect us to hit on oil demand direction in general and in different economies and sectors; Russia’s upstream and trade; Iran; Opec+ policy as well as constraints; and the of course the US shale and the rest of the industry’s upstream provinces. Equally neat will be debate on geo-political risk and macro economic drivers/uncertainties.
Our board member and global energy strategist at Piper Sandler, Jan Stuart will moderate as our panelists explore oil markets. We will have at least two hugely successful ‘buy-side’ experts willing not only to stick their neck out but also share insights on both theory and practice of trading oil markets.
We will host this session “live and in person” as well as virtually via zoom webinar.
We also ask you to participate in our annual price-outlook survey. Please submit your price estimates here. See link for our 2023 survey results.
SPEAKERS
Ashkan Ziabakhshdeylami
Ash Zia is an experienced oil trader and portfolio manager with a consistent PNL track record in both a bank and hedge fund seat. As an early joiner of Trailstone in 2014, he helped with the buildout of the Oil desk. He manages the liquids portfolio by deploying multi strategy risk around prop ideas in directional, relative value, and volatility space stemming from data driven fundamentals and systematic approaches.
Recently Mr. Zia has been promoted to Junior CIO and tasked with managing the energy traders within the hedge fund business of Trailstone, including oil, gas, and electricity in both US and Europe. Prior to joining Trailstone Mr. Zia was an Option Trader on the oil desk at Deutsche Bank in New York. Before that, he was head trader of Simon Fraser University's SIAS Endowment Fund where he was responsible for management and execution of trades for a multi asset portfolio.
Mr. Zia graduated from the honors program at Simon Fraser University with a B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering and a M.Sc. in Quantitative Finance.
Gary Ross
Gary Ross is Founder of PIRA, an international energy consulting firm retained by some 550 companies/governments in more than sixty countries around the world which was formed in 1976 and acquired by S&P Global in 2016. Dr. Ross spent roughly two years at S&P Global Platts as Head of Global Oil Analytics and Chief Energy Economist and is currently the CEO of Black Gold Investors LLC, a family investment company. Dr. Ross is a leading authority on worldwide energy markets. He led PIRA from its inception, building it into one of the most important firms in energy market analysis. He was responsible for short- and long-term oil market forecasts, overseeing all of the group’s published research. He is renowned for his accurate projections of major oil market price moves. He advised many governments on energy markets and energy policy issues, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Ross holds a Ph.D. in economics from the City University of New York.
Michelle Brouhard
Michelle Brouhard is an oil trader at Hartree Partners. Her investing expertise focuses on commodities such as oil, natural gas, metals and agriculture. She also has experience in investing in equities, FX and credit, based on a commodity point of view. Before Hartree, Michelle traded oil and other commodities with TrailStone Group (2016 – 2018); earlier, Michelle was a Portfolio Manager with PointState Capital, where she capitalized on the oil price crash of 2014.
Michelle has been named to the Hedge Fund Journal / Ernst & Young’s “50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds” for 2019. She also serves on the board of Hope for New York, is the co-founder of Refugee Action Fund and is on the National Leadership Council for World Vision. She is also a children’s leader at Bible Study Fellowship.
Michelle has a degree in Marketing and International studies from Kansas State University. In her spare time she participates in adventure races and marathons including a 250 km ultra marathon through Iceland and rim to rim hiking through the Grand Canyon.
MODERATOR
Jan Stuart
Johannes (Jan) Stuart serves as global energy strategist at Piper Sandler. A self-described oil-geek, Stuart and his team take a micro-fundamentals approach to the analysis and forecasting of the whole spectrum of energy (not just oil) - which frequently lands them away from consensus. Before joining Piper Sandler in 2017, Jan spent another 12 years in sell-side research building leading energy-macro franchises at Credit Suisse, Macquarie, UBS and ABN-Amro. He was a journalist for much of the nineties and started his career at the International Energy Agency in Paris. Mr. Stuart earned a BA in International Affairs from the American University in Paris; an MA in the same field from Boston University; and an MSc in Journalism from Columbia University in New York.
PROGRAM
5:30 - 6:00 PM: Registration
6:00 - 7:30 PM: Presentation and Discussion
7:30 - 8:00 PM: Reception
COST
Registration is required for all attendees. This session is complimentary for virtual attendees via zoom webinar. An admission fee is required for in-person attendees as listed below:
$40.00 for General Admission
$10.00 for Academic/Military
$0.00 for Energy Forum Sponsors
$0.00 for Paid Subscribers
QUESTIONS
We would be pleased to answer any questions you might have about The Energy Forum, Inc. or about this session. For updates, follow us on twitter @NYEnergyForum