Co-written by Florence Schurch, Secretary General ,STSA
From the clay tablets found in Uruk, evidencing contracts, debt instruments and basic accounting, historians have established that the Sumerians started long range trade with the Indian sub continent more than 5000 years ago; capitalist societies, well before Adam Smith. They would be followed by the Phoenicians whose trading activity spanned the Mediterranean basin. By Roman times, trade routes would stretch from the Mediterranean to China, the Indian sub-continent and parts of Africa. Trade not only brought goods but also facilitated the exchange of knowledge and technologies. Trade would decline during the middle ages as would prosperity, only to bounce back during the Renaissance with the commercial city states of the Hanseatic League, Venice, Genoa leading to the Age of Discovery as men attempted replace the perilous land routes (Mongol conquest) to the Far East with sea travel. Trade routes have always adapted to the demands of their times. Merchants from England, Spain, Portugal, Holland would eventually also send out their ships discovering new lands and commodities.
The times of free trade have always corresponded with prosperity; when governments adopt protectionist measures or higher taxation, the alternative is usually a decline in well being for all but nimble traders usually adapt and shift their commerce to more open markets.
Free trade is essential to ending poverty; the world has never experienced the massive reduction of poverty as it has over the last 30 years. Free trade builds trust among nations and countries that are open to it tend to grow faster, innovate, improve productivity, provide higher income and more opportunities to their people; Switzerland with very limited natural resources is maybe the best example of this.
What is a trader?
Commodity trading companies manage complex transportation and logistics activities from source, store, transport, process and deliver raw materials to their customers around the world. Commodity traders are essentially logistics companies that use the financial markets to finance their operations and hedge their price risk.
Traders must have excellent peripheral vision to understand the interconnected nature of the global economy. Market conditions can change rapidly, and traders must remain vigilant to a variety of factors: economic cycles, geopolitical developments, political crisis, climate change and technical factors affect their work on a daily basis.
Raw materials are either extracted from the ground, such as for oil, gas and metals and ores, or they come from farms.
Although trading has developed considerably, it is still in constant transition. Traders are actors of the transition by developing projects and solutions to improve the conditions of workers in the supply chain, to optimise energy resources and to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in shipping. This is what you will discover in this magazine.
