NordSearch Podcast

After 50+ conversations with some of the leading traders, founders, CEOs and Heads of Trading in the power markets, the NordSearch Podcast is doing something different.

In this special solo episode, NordSearch founder Patrick Reynolds reflects on the biggest lessons and recurring themes from the first 50 episodes of the podcast.

The episode explores what separates the best power traders, where sustainable trading edge really comes from, and how the role of the trader is evolving as power markets become increasingly systematic.

It also covers the rise of algo trading and AI, the relationship between discretionary and systematic trading, why human judgement still matters, and what NordSearch has learned about building successful trading teams and cultures.

Topics include:

- What makes a great power trader?
- Where does sustainable trading edge come from?
- Is discretionary trading being replaced by algorithms?
- How is AI actually being used in power trading?
- What will the trader of the future look like?
- What does it take to build a successful algo trading desk?
- What separates the highest-performing trading teams?

One theme runs throughout the episode: edge isn’t static.

Markets change. Technology changes. Competition changes. Strategies become crowded.

The question isn’t simply where does your edge come from today?

It’s why will that edge still exist tomorrow?

Three years. 50+ episodes. One episode bringing together the biggest lessons from leaders across the power trading industry.

European intraday power markets are becoming faster, more automated and increasingly interconnected — but is the underlying market infrastructure keeping up?
In this episode, Patrick Reynolds speaks with Vincent Thevenin, Market Expert at Montel, about the evolution of European short-term power trading.
Drawing on experience across TSOs, physical trading and market design, Vincent discusses the growing challenges facing XBID and continuous intraday trading as algorithmic and higher-frequency activity increases.
They explore the role of quant and HFT firms, the liquidity they bring to European power markets, and the infrastructure challenges this creates for TSOs and exchanges.
The conversation also covers market coupling and cross-border capacity, passive balancing, data transparency, 5-minute products, renewable integration, and how intraday trading has evolved from predominantly manual trading towards today's highly automated market.
Vincent also shares his experience of the early days of automated power trading at 50Hertz and why the next stage of European market design could have significant implications for traders.

For Episode 50 of the NordSearch Podcast, Patrick Reynolds is joined by Christian Togsverd, Co-founder & CEO of Tilde Energy Trading.
Christian has one of the most unusual backgrounds in European power trading. Before entering energy markets, he was a professional poker player, competing at the World Series of Poker and learning first-hand about risk, expected value and decision-making under uncertainty.
He went on to build experience across gas, carbon, quantitative trading and HFT before co-founding Tilde Energy Trading — a new systematic trading firm looking to combine the best of the Danish power trading model with techniques from the HFT and proprietary trading world.
In this episode, Patrick and Christian discuss:
• The lessons professional poker can teach traders about risk and decision-making
• Christian's journey from poker and sports betting into quantitative trading
• The differences between Danish power trading and HFT-style trading
• Why competition is pushing intraday power towards continuous markets and market making
• Why execution is becoming increasingly important
• How Tilde is building a highly automated, systematic trading business
• How AI allows a small trading firm to operate with significantly more leverage
• Using AI for infrastructure, research, operations and alpha generation
• Why AI alone isn't enough to build profitable trading strategies
• The danger of overfitting AI-generated strategies
• How Tilde thinks about AI model and token costs
• Cloud infrastructure versus on-premise systems
• Tilde's ambitions across power, gas and derivatives
• Building a collaborative, high-performance trading culture
Christian also explains why Tilde believes the current generation of AI tools creates an enormous advantage for a startup: allowing a small team to build infrastructure, automate operational work and iterate on trading ideas far faster than would previously have been possible.
A fascinating conversation on where quantitative power trading is heading and a fitting guest for Episode 50 of the NordSearch Podcast.

Patrick Reynolds speaks with Christian Montes from BD Energy about building AI-driven power trading strategies, expanding into US markets, and why finding an edge in Europe has become increasingly difficult.
The conversation covers machine learning, quantitative research, risk management, AI agents, market efficiency, and what the future of algorithmic power trading could look like.

Returning guest Casper Sønderby, CEO & Co-Founder of twig, joins the NordSearch Podcast to discuss how AI is reshaping power trading.
We cover twig's expansion across Europe, the US and Japan, why they prioritise hiring machine learning engineers over traditional traders, their investment in an AI data centre, and why execution is becoming the industry's biggest competitive advantage.