Senior Price Reporter at Fastmarkets in Houston, TX

Company Description

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 700 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland and beyond.

Job Description

The Role

Fastmarkets is looking for a Senior Price Reporter to cover the metals recycling market in the Americas. We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and has a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. The successful candidate should ideally have deep knowledge and expertise in metals recycling. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly. We expect our reporters to develop a high level of market expertise in certain niche sectors, publish quality prices and insightful content in line with the company’s PRA approach, and work within a regional and global team to support the development and adoption of Fastmarkets' prices and embrace our EEI strategy (Expertise, Engagement & Innovation).

Principal accountabilities

• Expand and enhance pricing and market coverage of metals recycling in the Americas. This includes building and maintaining strong industry relationships with market participants, developing robust and transparent price assessments, and delivering insightful, data-driven editorial content.
• Lead coverage efforts by identifying key market trends, regulatory impacts, and shifts in trade flows, ensuring Fastmarkets is positioned as a leading source of pricing intelligence and analysis in this fast-evolving segment of the battery materials market.
• Produce exemplary price assessments and indices in line with company methodology, price specifications, and IOSCO principles across a range of markets
• Peer review and approve price assessments and indices in order to ensure prices are representative and judgement has been exercised consistently
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive contact-base, using all means of communication including face-to-face meetings and networking
• Deliver actionable, regular, accurate market commentary in a timely manner, as well as in-depth features, focus pieces and analysis, with minimal editing needed. Demonstrate depth and breadth in this content through experience and knowledge
• Demonstrate complex and consistent use of judgement to produce representative prices in challenging and opaque markets
• Back colleagues up on their pricing patches when necessary and peer review and editor approve their prices to ensure processes have been duly followed and editorial judgement correctly applied
• Travel to, attend, report on and present at events and webinars, and chair panel discussions when deemed appropriate by editors on behalf of the company
• Take responsibility for key aspects of projects to launch new prices and promote current prices. Engage in and lead detailed, formal discussion of specifications internally and externally as part of specification reviews; take initiative by challenging processes; suggest and deliver improvements to current offering
• Support the whole team’s editorial processes. Mentor and coach other reporters where requested by editors, or as opportunities arise, to share knowledge and foster growth in the team
• Take ownership and be authoritative within your markets: organize and chair meetings internally where a collaborative approach to pricing, news, etc, would achieve better results than working independently
• Help foster Fastmarkets’ prices and expertise through the team’s market engagement plan, which includes producing PRA content, white papers and infographics, participating to internal and external events, promoting the company on social media, and attending industry meetings.

Key interfaces

• Work within a global team to develop prices, news and market commentary.
• Reports to regional editor.
• Work with other functions when necessary while maintaining the required segregation between editorial and commercial activities; support Fastmarkets events in relevant commodity sector and partner with the strategy and market development team to support price adoption campaigns and exchange listings.

Qualifications

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

• A high level of written and spoken English is essential. Knowledge of another language is helpful but not required
• Cross-market knowledge of a number of market beats required, with deep expertise and reach evident in the black mass and lithium-ion battery recycling market
• The skill and capacity to take part in and lead detailed specification reviews, delivering on all compliance standards
• Team player who fosters excellent working culture and acts - both internally and externally - in a courteous and professional manner with impeccable integrity
• General desire to expand market knowledge and commitment to join in projects and take part in training courses
• Ability and confidence to present in a professional manner at industry events
• Confidence to take ownership and provide leadership within a team working on projects
• Excellent attention to detail
• Ability to take initiative to cover stories, develop price offering and to communicate this offering professionally to market participants
• Strong networking skills and a good confident telephone manner. It needs discipline and dynamism
• Practical experience in PRA journalism and writing is necessary for this role
• Experience working with numbers and spreadsheets and producing regular market reports and insightful editorial copy required
• Experience speaking to an audience on panels, webinars, or delivering presentations to external parties
• Experience delivering market consultations, or launching and developing prices ideal
• An interest in and understanding of financial markets or commodities is needed.
• Full training in specific market factors will be provided over a period of one month after which the senior reporter should be able to discover and assess prices competently and accurately in line with company standards.

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Additional Information

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

We are committed to ensuring all candidates feel welcomed and supported. Should your application advance and you require accommodations for the interview process, please inform us so we can make the necessary arrangements.

If the position is listed as remote this opportunity is available to applicants based in the following states:

• Illinois

• Oregon

• New York

• Pennsylvania

• Texas*

* Denotes states with office locations to support hybrid working.

Otherwise the position will be located as shown in the advert.

You’ve read a little about us – now it’s over to you!

If you like what you’ve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it’s time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it’s used to determine whether or not you’ll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we’ll ask you on the day.

It’s vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you’re great.