
The focus of this doctoral seminar is set on important commodities like electricity, natural gas, and oil. Parallel to the classical commodity markets – where the physical delivery of the traded is an integral part of the transaction – there exist purely financial markets: here, derivative instruments on the under-lying commodity are traded without any physical transaction. The reason for the expansion of these financial markets is a growing interest in using instruments like futures, options, swaps etc for hedging purposes in order to mitigate market risk. However, speculation strategies also contribute to rising market volumes. This doctoral seminar covers both types of markets: physical markets and the markets of derivatives. The investigated topics are relevant market models, the valuation of traded instruments, and the quantification and the management of inherent risks.