In 2025, global energy trading compensation finally moved beyond the 2021–23 super-cycle. 2026 is bringing a compensation reset. In this article, our Talent Intelligence team reflects on key changes in compensation across the past 12 months, and explores early signals for the year ahead.
1. Compensation Reset
Global energy trading markets entered 2025 facing a different set of market realities to the 2021–23 super-cycle. The structural dislocations that drove exceptional earnings had largely receded, replaced by shorter-cycle volatility and fewer persistent market imbalances. Price movements remained frequent, but opportunities to scale and sustain high-conviction risk positions diminished.
As 2026 unfolds, the consequences of this shift are clear. Compensation structures have undergone a deliberate reset. Bonus pools moderated across most commodity product and regional markets during 2025, reflecting more normalised return profiles. Governance frameworks tightened, capital discipline strengthened, and greater scrutiny was applied to how performance translated into pay.
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- Interactive Charts
- Desk performance by company type
- Individual bonus pay data
2. Platform Performance & Divergence
Hedge funds and other companies deploying asset-light strategies have struggled to monetise rapid volatility without the embedded optionality provided by physical assets, logistics networks, storage, or long-term customer flows. Without structural buffers, short-term dislocations have translated into inconsistent returns.
Across oil and gas trading desks in particular, several major hedge funds reported materially weaker performance relative to prior years. Compensation outcomes in these environments are expected to reflect this pressure, with bonus pools under strain and pay dispersion widening significantly.
By contrast, asset-backed platforms have benefited from portfolio optimisation, physical flexibility, storage and logistics arbitrage, contract management optionality and customer-linked flows. These structural advantages have enabled steadier performance.
While headline returns have moderated from super-cycle highs, integrated platforms have been better positioned to generate consistent P&L. The result is a widening gap in bonus predictability and stability across platform types, a structural shift that is reshaping talent preferences.
Trading house models have historically enabled outsized returns during periods of structural dislocation, particularly when regional fragmentation, sanctions, or physical bottlenecks create arbitrage windows. In 2025, however, market conditions have been less dislocated and more episodic. Margins have compressed across core arbitrage corridors, and the absence of sustained dislocations has reduced the opportunity for multi-quarter structural trades. As a result, performance at many trading houses has normalised from super-cycle peaks.
3. From Candidate-Led to Employer-Led
This compensation reset has reshaped behaviour across the talent market. While dissatisfaction exists, particularly in pressured gas and oil seats where mobility has remained more subdued than many anticipated. Candidates are weighing reduced upside against platform stability, balance-sheet strength, and predictability of earnings.
The result is a meaningful shift in leverage. Hiring conditions have tilted toward employers. Sign-on bonuses are harder to secure, guarantees are more limited, and negotiations are more disciplined. Firms remain willing to stretch, but selectively. The prevailing sentiment across leadership teams is clear: execution risk from a poor hire now outweighs the opportunity cost of waiting.
4. Base Salary as a Strategic Lever
While much of the post-super-cycle discussion has centred on bonus compression, an increasingly prominent 2026 theme is the renewed focus on base salary. After two years of moderated and, in some cases, volatile bonus outcomes, fixed pay is regaining importance as the anchor of total compensation.
Several trading houses have already experienced selective front-office departures where base salary, rather than headline bonus potential, was the primary point of friction. By contrast, logistics, shipping and execution operations, which expanded rapidly in response to earlier dislocation, are now playing a more stabilised and optimised role.
Upward pressure is likely to be selective, concentrated in roles where bonus compression has been sharpest or where skill scarcity remains acute, including LNG optimisation, short-term power in growth markets, analytics-enabled trading, and structured origination. In these seats, modest reinforcement of fixed pay may be used to manage retention risk without materially expanding overall compensation budgets.
In 2026, upward pressure is likely to be selective, concentrated in roles where bonus compression has been sharpest or where skill scarcity remains acute, including LNG optimisation, short-term power in growth markets, analytics-enabled trading, and structured origination.
5. A Year of Differentiation
As 2026 progresses, aggregate compensation levels across global energy trading are expected to remain broadly stable. The defining feature of the year, however, is differentiation rather than expansion. Market-wide bonus elasticity is unlikely to re-emerge without a renewed structural dislocation in underlying commodities.
Instead, pay outcomes are becoming increasingly role-specific. Upside is concentrating in capabilities that are scarce, difficult to replicate, or directly linked to platform scalability.