by Eszter Pontenagel
Energy markets reward speed, precision, and courage. But successful trading depends on far more than making the right trade.
Behind every high-performing energy operation are regulators, exchanges, system operators, infrastructure, technology, risk management, and countless strategic decisions that can determine whether a trading business scales or stalls.
In Power Moves, Eszter Pontenagel pulls back the curtain on this hidden world.
Drawing on more than 350 market-entry projects across physical power and gas markets, Pontenagel shares real-world insights into what separates organizations that move decisively from those that lose valuable time, talent, and opportunity.
Order your copy now for exclusive bonuses. Available everywhere books are sold.
Since 2022, Eszter Pontenagel has achieved:
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About the book...
Through stories and lessons involving hedge funds, investment banks, utilities, startups, market makers, and high-frequency traders, you’ll discover how leading organizations:
This is not a textbook about energy trading. It is an insider’s guide to the structures, relationships, and strategic choices that make energy trading possible.
What's inside...
If you want to know what success in energy markets actually looks like from the inside, this is where to start.
Wealth managers, banks, power suppliers, industrial utilities, startups, commodity trading houses, and market makers, each arriving with a different plan to enter energy markets, and each meeting different challenges along the way.
These are their stories, told from the other side of the table.
If you're wondering what really happens behind the price blinking on your screen, this section is for you.
Regulators, system operators, exchanges, interconnectors, brokers, and banks all govern the infrastructure that rarely makes headlines but always decides the outcome.
This section walks you through how it all fits together, and why understanding the system will always beat reacting to it.
Meet the author...
Eszter Pontenagel is a mom of three and the founder and CEO of Time2Market, an independent market management service provider.
She has spent her career working at the intersection of trading desks, operational teams, and market counterparties across the energy industry. She is known for building trading setups that work not only in theory but in practice: trading desks that match the ambitions of a company, the working style of its people, and the requirements of the regulators, exchanges, and operators around it.
Together with Paul Pontenagel, Eszter leads Time2Market, where they specialize in onboarding high-frequency traders, market makers, hedge funds, capital managers, investment banks, as well as large and newly established energy trading companies to physical power and gas markets.
Eszter’s perspective is rooted in relationships, trust, and the conviction that strong market infrastructure begins with understanding the people who depend on it.
Power Moves is her first book, published by Best Seller Publishing.
– Eszter Pontenagel
why read this book...
"More participants than ever are entering the energy market, each approaching it from their own angle. In this book, you'll see how that plays out in practice. They're finding their own niches, identifying opportunities others might overlook, and building paths forward that didn't exist before.
Because the opportunities are still there. Read the chapters, and make up your mind. The best years are maybe in front of us."
"Whether you are a veteran who remembers the sweat of the 2013 trading floor or a new entrant building high-frequency strategies and low latency engines, this book provides the necessary map for navigating the plumbing of the modern power market.
It reminds us that while the tools have moved from the hand to the code, the fundamental challenge remains: gaining the right access, at the right time, in a market that never sleeps."
why read this book...
Order your copy now for exclusive bonuses. Available everywhere books are sold.
BONUS
The stories of 15 of our amazing clients made it ito the book. Several more didn't, including a global LNG player building out a full European gas trading setup, a renewable asset owner navigating market access for the first time, and much more. After purchasing Power Moves, you will be able to access these free of charge.
BONUS
Order Power Moves before October 10th and get the complete audiobook for free. Listen on your commute, at your desk, or wherever you get your reading done.
Lastly...
I wrote this book because I kept seeing the same thing happen over and over again.
Brilliant companies with experienced traders, real capital, and palpable ambition would get stuck somewhere between the strategy and the market. In the middle of their expansion, things would slow down or fall apart entirely, not because the trading desk wasn't good, but because the supporting functions around it weren't built to support it.
I've spent my entire career in that gap. First inside large energy trading houses, shielding traders from all the 'bureacracy' that had to happen before they could place a trade. Then building Time2Market, where we've helped dozens of clients enter and scale across hundreds of energy markets worldwide.
What I kept noticing was that the companies who struggled weren't the ones without capital or talent. On the contrary, they were the ones who had all resources they could need, but who didn't know what they didn't know.
And in energy markets, that gap is very expensive.
This book is my attempt to close the gap by uncovering the stories, the mistakes, and the lessons that you can only learn inside an industry that looks simple until you try to enter it.
I wrote it for the trader who knows their strategy is right but doesn't understand why execution keeps falling short. For the executive who is expanding into new markets and discovering that what works now isn't translating into the new markets. For the fund manager who is entering physical energy for the first time and realizing it's nothing like the financial markets they came from.
If any of that sounds familiar, this book was written for you.
And I can't wait for you to read it.
Eszter
one question...
Not "stuck." Not "waiting." Not "hoping the submission gets accepted."
Actually moving. Knowing why a license takes the time it takes, and what to do while it does. Knowing which conversation moved the process forward and which one just costs you five more weeks without generating PnL on that market.
If you can't remember the last time market entry felt that clear and straightforward, this book was written for you.
who is this for...
You've been told that you can "just figure it out as you go," but you know in your gut that's not a strategy.
You're a Head of Trading and you're building an energy arm that needs to fit into the rest of the trading desk seamlessly and withstand the scrutiny of regulators.
You own a hedge fund and you refuse to spend two years building an energy trading desk that doesn't fit your pace and strategy.
You're a market maker and you need the speed of your market entry to match the speed of your trade execution.
You're a utility manager balancing volatility across regions, ESG pressure from customers, and a parent company's approval chain that slows down every decision you make.
You're a renewable asset owner and you know your production depends on weather, not a plan, and you're not sure your current setup can react fast enough to that.
You're an aggregator entering a market that used to belong to utilities and large industrials, and you're still figuring out where you fit in.
You're building an energy trading desk from scratch and realizing that hiring traders and raising capital are far from the hardest parts.
You've been watching the opportunities of energy trading pass you by, and you're starting to wonder if there's time for you to catch up.
Power Moves shows you how to achieve both.
Order your copy now for exclusive bonuses. Available everywhere books are sold.