It's Hard To Make The Right Call If You're Flying Blind
Recently, a commercial jet and a private jet flew far too close for comfort - Moments from disaster. Thanks to decisive action and technology, the pilots involved stopped a mass-casualty event. And while the horror of what might have been lingers in your mind, the incident highlights the point of my company's name:
Let's be grateful for good tech used by well-trained humans -> An oboard system alerted both cockpits to the conflict and provided real-time information to them. The now empowered pilots took both evasive and informed action to avoid catastrophe.
In a nutshell, what we built at RadarRadar is such a system for commodity traders and producers: A near real-time dashboard, a single source of truth for all your positions.
Imagine if these pilots were given all the variables needed to calculate the potential collision piecemeal in flight. They are smart. They can do the math...
“If Plane A is flying at X altitude and Z speed....” But now imagine that the variables given to the pilots may or may not be up to date, they must figure that out on the fly... Also, they need to open different tools to find all the pieces of this puzzle... Plus, just for fun, some units are provided in Metric while others are in Imperial. Now we're talking commodities.
There isn't time to do that math is there? A grim thought. Plus, the error rate when using disparate, untimely, and non-harmonized data is just higher. We're all human and that's the point.
Now think about your own daily responsibilities in the world of commodities. You come to work in the morning. You need to get on top of things.
How much time does it take for you to figure out your positions? How much time does it take to determine if those positions are on a collision course with a change in the market? How sure are you of the data behind that math? How much time does it take to verify the validity of the underlying data? And unlike the pilots above who rarely encounter such a conflict, you do this every day.
You may be excellent at math but you’re human too – just like those very capable pilots. By the time you figure out your positions... by the time you figure out if a conflict exists... AND by the time you feel confident in the math... is it too late to avoid catastrophe?... Day in and day out?
If this situation burned you in the past and still does from time to time, I'd love to chat.
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