A man walks into a (silver) bar….

"...On a crisp spring morning in 1996, a few weeks after joining the venerable British Bullion Bank NM Rothschilds and Sons as a graduate trainee, I found myself on a windswept runway at Stansted Airport peering into air-freight crates containing many millions of dollars of silver bars.

Six armed guards surrounded the crates, one of whom asked me what I wanted to do next.

I had no idea.

The senior relationship manager I accompanied on the train from London had disappeared to sign some customs waivers, leaving me in the company of the silver, the armed guards and two gentlemen who had travelled with the silver bars and who looked and dressed like villains from a James Bond movie (the Roger Moore era). They had suits and hair from the 1970s, they were chain-smoking, and one had a huge vertical scar running down the front of his face from what I guessed was a knife fight (I wondered if he had won or lost; I did not ask).

This scenario was not one that Rothschilds' HR had asked me to opine on at my interviews a few months previously. Nevertheless, I found my mouth opening and saying with uncharacteristic confidence despite my inner turmoil:?

"Erm..hmm...Yes, this looks in order; where do I sign?"

On the train back to Central London, the gangster bankers said nothing, but just before we were to alight at Liverpool Street, one of them looked at me and suggested we have a drink later. I smiled politely and made some excuses about attending night school for banking exams, and we left them to it. (It could have been a fun night out; maybe I would have gotten a scar, too)

What an unforgettable day, I thought: What other exciting situations would I encounter if I focused exclusively on working in the commodity markets for a living?"

Over the last 27 years, I have worked in the City, on Wall Street, in Shanghai, and other global financial centres for some of the world's largest banks, trading, financing and investing in most major commodity markets. While much of my trading and deal-making was conducted on these banks' trading floors and meeting rooms, I periodically engaged again in the business's more physical (and similarly exciting) side.

From copper warehouses in Shanghai to the mountains of iron ore and coal by the port of Dalian (and the North Koreans who kept popping up to say hello), from the headquarters of the National strategic commodity stockpiles in South Korea to the heating oil tanks of New Haven; from the corn fields of the Great Plains to the cattle ranches of Texas; from the vast hydrocarbon-rich acreage of Mendoza (Argentina - good wines too) and the bunkering terminals of Scandinavia, I have been involved in financing production, storage, transportation and trading most significant commodities. (I was also quite busy with the investor community during the global financial crisis - now that is another fascinating chapter, too.)

And I loved every minute of it.

I hope to resume the bigger adventures someday soon.

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