Cargo Desk: A Physical Trading Desk Game
After spending a few months in physical refined metals trading, I got the big picture of how the mysterious physical commodities world works from the inside.
I vibe coded this game with inspiration from how I saw allocation decisions being made live on the desk.
Cargo Desk
It’s a simplified simulation of running a physical metals trading desk where you’re in the seat of the trader making allocation decisions.
You hold long-term purchase and sales contracts. Between them sit a warehouse, freight, the spot market, and LME/ CME forward curves.
The Game:
- New information arrives: cargoes become available, new customer demand appears, the curves move, freight and news change.
- You allocate by dragging supply cargoes onto customer contracts, store, buy or sell spot, or run a CME/LME arbitrage route.
- You lock the book.
- The round resolves and a P&L waterfall shows exactly what made or lost money and why.
Every allocation is a bet. The obvious cargo might cover a demanding customer now, but using high-grade material today can leave a future order uncovered. A cheap cargo might arrive late.
Try it!
You can play the prototype here:
→ Cargo Desk (playable prototype)
Work in Progress
Keep checking back because this project is very much a work in progress.
In fact, currently it’s actually giving trading assessment vibes (cough, if you are a trading house looking to develop this further as an aptitude test for hiring, feel free to reach out XD)
Stay tuned also, because the next step from here is that we’ll be making AI play something similar. At the end of the day, it’s an optimisation problem!
Feel free to write me a Linkedin message if you have any suggestions: