Whitepaper: The ‘Missing Middle’: Rebuilding the 3–7 Year Talent Layer in Physical Oil Trading

Trading floors have never been quieter, nor CVs heavier. Across global oil trading, the 3–7-year experience band is emerging as a critical fault line: analysts who entered the market during the COVID era remote work are now technically adept but commercially isolated.

In this whitepaper, HC Group's Managing Director of European Energy, Daniel Cordell, explores how firms are confronting a “missing middle” between junior analysts and senior P&L owners. Rebuilding this cohort is not a ‘nice-to-have’; it is essential to sustaining long-term trading bench strength, preserving cultural continuity, and safeguarding future profit resilience.

You can access the full whitepaper by filling out the form below.

This article provides a preview of HC Group’s The 'Missing Middle': Rebuilding the 3-7 Year Talent Layer whitepaper. Complete the form below to gain full access to the report, which includes:

How the COVID-era experience gap is affecting early-career trading talent
The rise of a “missing middle” between junior analysts and senior P&L owners
Proven strategies to rebuild commercial capability

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The Experience Gap: A COVID-Era Legacy

From 2020 to 2022, remote work replaced the floor as the learning ground. Young traders were onboarded via Teams calls rather than terminals; exposure came through spreadsheets, not shared P&L moments. While productivity remained high, the depth of capability did not. Peer learning, on-desk coaching, and cross-commodity osmosis all declined. The once vibrant 'trading floor noise', the informal debate that sharpened judgment, fell silent.

Today, many 3–7-year professionals can model a cargo or optimise a blend, yet can struggle to connect those analytics to risk-taking, negotiation, and market narrative. The next generation of traders is often deskbound rather than deal-minded.

The Consequences: A Siloed Generation

This 'siloed generation' is now approaching seniority without the formative experiences their predecessors had. The impact is measurable:

Narrow commercial awareness: Strong quantitative grounding but limited exposure to logistics, counterparties, or freight.
Reduced collaboration: Peer cohorts built over Zoom rarely mature into high-trust teams.
Soft-skill deficit: Fewer opportunities to negotiate, pitch, or challenge ideas in real time.
Succession risk: Thin internal pipelines for future desk heads or senior originators.

As one Head of Trading put it: “We’ve got juniors who can code and seniors who can trade but very few who can do both.” The gap between technical proficiency and commercial maturity is widening, and without intervention, it risks a decade-long talent bottleneck.

This ‘siloed generation’ is now approaching seniority without the formative experiences their predecessors had.

What’s Next?

The whitepaper highlights a critical challenge in physical oil trading: the “missing middle” of 3–7-year talent. Across our global mandates at HC Group, we see strong graduate pipelines and experienced P&L owners, yet a structurally thin mid-layer that should be evolving into tomorrow’s desk heads.

Fixing this requires more than recruitment. It demands a coordinated approach that includes:

Mapping capability and exposure by tenure
Rebuilding informal learning through structured mentoring and rotations
Aligning incentives to reward team-based knowledge transfer
Attracting mid-career talent from adjacent commodities

Firms that invest now in structured exposure and real-time learning will rebuild commercially confident traders and strengthen long-term trading resilience.