Commodities Diversity Champion: Nurhayati Mohd Noor, Derivatives Trading Leader

Meet Nurhayati Mohd Noor – known to many in the commodities community simply as 'Yati' – currently Head of Asia Energy Derivatives at Freepoint Commodities in Dubai. 

In this interview with HC Group, Yati talks to us about her current role and shares her impressive career journey – from her childhood in Malaysia, through roles in Singapore to her current work in the Middle East.

She also gives her views on the challenges of combining parenthood and a top trading career, and how the commodities sector can best support women to take on senior roles.

HC Group: From your Masters at Carnegie Mellon to trading roles at JP Morgan, Mercuria and Shell, you’ve had a fascinating career. But first, take us back to the origins of your interest in this sector. 

Nurhayati Mohd Noor: My parents came from villages in Malaysia, from somewhat impoverished backgrounds. Both their fathers died at a young age. They had to start working very early in their lives, but saw education as their gateway to success. They managed to get scholarships to study in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, where I was born and raised. 

My parents studied to become university lecturers. My father managed to get a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue his master's degree in the US, and later completed his PhD - that, to me was extremely impressive. To me, my parents are my heroes, and they've always had complete faith in me - even when I was extremely stressed and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. They would say: “You know, we've never known you to fail. So I don't know why you're feeling stressed!” 

I didn't have that much faith in myself - but seeing them have faith in me made me feel more confident and gave me the ability to carry on.

HC: So how did you get started in trading? 

Yati: I was a Petronas scholar. Petronas sent me to college, and I had to go back and serve my scholarship bond with the company. I then moved on to trading operations and eventually, physical naphtha trading. After Petronas I left to join Exxon as an optimiser. After that, I went to JP Morgan and that's when I first started to become a derivatives trader. I've now been trading for almost 20 years.

HC: Tell us about your transition to becoming a derivatives trader 

Yati: I was first hired into JP Morgan as a physical trader. But it was the end of 2008 and there was the new Dodd Frank Act, which curtailed investment bank activities in physical commodity trading. So I had to evolve myself from a physical trader to a derivatives trader if I didn't want to get fired!

I started quoting flow for Singapore gasoline, even though I'd never traded gasoline before. To do that I asked the brokers how to mark the curve, and I had to self-teach myself a lot of things. But this was my chance to be an early market mover, an early participant, and to get market share. 

I worked really hard to re-invent myself as a derivatives trader. It was an extremely stressful time of my life. But we did really well and at one point we were quoting 90% of the market flow and winning it. 

Then, over the years, I felt I wanted to be a proprietary trader and not a market maker. It was tough transitioning from physical to derivatives trading because you needed to have a different way of thinking and assessing risk. As part of my learning journey, I read a lot of trading books which really inspired me to give it a shot.

Now with Freepoint Commodities in Dubai, I run a team of commodities traders in Dubai and Singapore. I also still actively trade my own book. At Freepoint, we're very supportive of our traders: we try to create an environment where it supports the trader and risk taking. That means making sure the trader is in the best environment to produce results, whether moving fast in terms of providing the technology, support, or even location, to do that.

HC: There’s a discussion in many boardrooms at the moment about diversity, and what that should mean for companies. How do you view diversity? 

Yati: When I think about diversity, I don't really think about gender or race or religion. It's more about your circumstances, or your background - you can't choose it. You're born into it.

HC: Have you faced career challenges because of your own background or lifestyle choices? 

Occasionally, when I’ve been called up for senior roles in other companies, and because I have a child, there is one surprising question that sometimes comes up. That question is if I’m still focused on my job or if my focus is now on family. I made a lifestyle choice to have a family, but I could also have made a lifestyle choice to have a very involved mountain climbing hobby, for example. But the discrimination between the two feels quite different.

For me having a family is an important priority, it gives me an anchor in my life. It benefits me in ways I did not appreciate until I become a parent. I think a lot of women on the front line in particular feel pressure to not start a family.

HC: How do you think commodities organisations can best support woman, and aspiring parents, to succeed in their trading careers? 

I think it helps if management talks more to their employees about it being OK to start a family – and that it's OK to take time off. A resilient company should be able to make arrangements to provide coverage for their employees when they are out of the office.

I think we should always focus on what the person can bring in terms of results: it should really be merit based. And we should actively think about overcoming any biases, unconscious or not.

There is a lot we can do about this in formal and informal settings. In formal ways, it's about clear communication to employees. Informally, it’s about having examples in management and on the front-line. Today, I encourage my traders to start families if it is part of their life plan and to pursue whatever lifestyle choices that they want to have outside of their work. We have a life outside of our work and it is our whole human existence that makes us. It may seem silly that I have to state this, but trading can really be an all-consuming job sometimes.

HC: During your experience of becoming a trading leader, were there any other challenges you faced on the way up – and how did you overcome them? 

Yati: It was not easy coming up to be a trader, especially as a derivatives trader. The market was extremely hostile to me. They would spread rumours about me or try to bring me down in different ways. I guess if you're different, you stand out and if you make a mistake, it's easy to pick on - but everybody makes mistakes - it's part of learning.

What helped me succeed is that I move on from mistakes quickly and I think making mistakes is just part of the path to success. When people were criticising me or making fun of my mistakes I didn't take it too seriously or let it affect me much. I can say this now because I'm on the other side, when you're going through it - it's tough.

HC: As a senior female leader in this sector, what are your reflections on the place of woman in trading roles today? 

Yati: When I go to industry events, there are still very few women. In the last 10 years I haven’t seen that ratio shift much in the favour of women. That's still a bit of a disappointment for me. I think especially in the prop trading side of the business, there are very few women. So obviously there's a lot of work that can still be done in this aspect.

HC: Tell us about how you support other traders trying to rise in this industry. 

Yati: I do mentor a lot of young traders in the market outside of the company. When I come across a young trader in the market, I always make myself available for them to talk to me or send me a message, and we'll talk about various things.

We can talk about markets; they can send me charts; or they can just talk to me about the challenges they face in their career. Trading can be very psychological and it’s not unusual to have a crisis of confidence. Sometimes it helps to have a fellow trader to share that psychological burden. Young traders especially have less certainty in the trajectory of their careers because they have less experience.

HC: Is there any advice you wish you’d had when starting out on your career – that you now give to others trying to follow in your footsteps? 

I think we should take time to understand who we are, what we enjoy doing, and what makes us passionate. This involves trying a lot of different things and feeling OK with failure. It's a balance between doing something passionately but not taking yourself too seriously. If you can do this, there’s a good chance you can find something that you really enjoy doing and hopefully be successful at it.

I wish I had this kind of career advice when I was younger, because I felt lost when I graduated from high school. The normal advice went like this: “Go find your passion and do that.” But how do I find my passion? How do I know if I'm good at something, or if this is what I want to do for the rest of my life? The answer is that you need to try a lot of things.

You need to be adept at handling disappointment and failure. It's about trying something out and being able to say: “Oh, well, let's try something else” when it doesn’t work out. I really wish I had that advice because in the beginning of my career, I took failure too seriously and too hard. So just love yourself a little bit more, be easier on yourself, and you'll be fine.