A. THE AVERAGE BROKER/AGENT INTERMEDIARY TODAY FAILS & EARNS NO INCOME
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According to studies, primarily because of the central role that the Internet has played in international trading, the real market for the intermediaries or middlemen in the global ‘secondary’ market trading has been collapsing quite rapidly in recent times. Estimates from such experts and accounts by an experienced trader assert that 2000 was the last “good year” for the intermediary in the business. Kamal J. Southall, for example, maintains that “after 2000, the critical mass of brokers and traders who were ill-informed and poorly trained, as well as of fraudulently applied offers and scams, reached the point that real end-buyers manufacturers and suppliers stopped responding [to intermediaries] except in exceptional cases.
Southall estimates, citing another expert’s calculation, that out of some one million individuals currently trying to make it as brokers or trade intermediaries in the world, “perhaps no more than 1% has the training and skill needed ever to close a deal… [meaning that] the overwhelming majority, are trading blindly, [hence] deals are collapsing… and more to the point, [oil dealers are] being defrauded – sometimes massively.”
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The consensus among experts is that previously, before the current advent of the predominance of the Internet in international trading when facsimile and telex trading was the supreme medium for the business, there had existed a reasonably robust and viable market, although small, for the intermediary agent. It was rather common for an intermediary to occasionally get to a contract closing stage, close deals, and earn at least reasonable commission income. However, there has NOT been such an intermediary market lately for some years now, since the new Internet era. Rather, such a market for the intermediary has essentially been dead for all but the most skilled and experienced intermediary in the market today – killed in part, though by no means completely, by the preeminent use of the Internet medium by the Internet trader and intermediary.
In short, the new reality of today is that while, in the days before the Internet, the average broker, agent, or other intermediary or ‘middleman’ involved in international trading generally successfully closed deals and earned decent income with at least some modest frequency, quite to the contrary, such broker or agent or another intermediary who operate in this current Internet era, on the other hand, hardly closes any deals or earns any income in the business anymore. What factors account for this phenomenon? Do these brokers and other intermediaries generally make no sales or income in this Internet era?
B. MAJOR REASONS ACCOUNTING FOR THIS
Many factors account for this. Briefly summed up, they range from the dramatically increased number of scams and fraudsters in the business, made much easier by the shield of anonymity provided by the Internet, to relative lack of proper training, skills, or knowledge in the fundamentals of the business prevalent among the modern class of brokers and other intermediaries as a result of the easiness of requisite qualification for one to become an Internet “broker” or intermediary, to the element of the increased pervasiveness of “The Joker Broker” mentality and behavior among the Internet-era brokers, agents & other intermediaries.
However, all these various causative factors being duly considered, perhaps the single, overarching, most paramount consideration accounting for the woeful failure and inability of the modern broker and the intermediary to do business successfully, could be subsumed into this one central theme and be summed up as follows: the use of, and reliance upon, badly flawed and erroneous methodology, rules and procedures for oil deals on the part of the modern class of intermediaries in doing business – a class of intermediaries that is often typically notorious for being particularly untrained, misguided and uninformed as to the actual and proper way of doing the business.
Most, unfortunately, frequently the result of the above reality is that by largely relying upon and using such misguided and badly flawed methodology and procedures in doing business, such brokers and agents, who are notorious, as well, for often being overzealous, self-consumed, and desperate to find a buyer or make a quick commission at all costs, essentially become, themselves, actually the biggest obstacles to themselves and fellow brokers and agents in successfully closing deals or making money in the oil trading business!
C. THE BASIC WAYS MISGUIDED BROKERS & AGENTS BECOME THE MAIN OBSTACLES
Broadly speaking, there are a few basic identifiable major ways in which this rather awesome phenomenon of the modern overzealous and misguided Internet broker or agent frequently manifests itself as an obstacle to successfully doing business.
USE OF BADLY FLAWED & IMPRACTICAL METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES IN DOING BUSINESS
But, probably the most impactful but pervasive way and how the overzealous and misguided broker/agent intermediary frequently constitutes himself (or herself), whether intentionally or unintentionally, into a crippling obstacle, rather than an aid or facilitator, to successfully doing petroleum deals or closing one, is basically by their use of methodology and procedures which are badly flawed and erroneous, unrealistic, unreal, impracticable, and often downright pie-in-the-sky like and comical.
A classic example is the frequent resort by many Internet brokers and agents to use arcane procedures such as the ‘LOI,’ ‘ICPO,’ ‘NCND,’ ‘BCL,’ etc., in business. According to many respected experts and seasoned practitioners in the trading field, the employment of procedures such as these by any supplier or intermediary is virtually an automatic marker that immediately gives away the user as a trade amateur or intermediary and a failure who not only lacks the requisite training or knowledge of the proper trading procedures, but who has never successfully closed any deals, and never will. Indeed, to a seasoned buyer (or the agent of one), getting sales to offer from a supplier or agent that opens with such terms and procedures is typically a clear marker that automatically sets off an alarm bell in such a buyer’s head, spelling danger and potential doom to the buyer. As one expert put it, “In fact, the presence of many of these terms are considered to be signs of Advance Fee Fraud by knowledgeable players and law enforcement.
This is how an intermediary who admitted to being a failed Joker-Broker with a prior record of a string of failures but who later acquired the proper training and became a reformed broker, and is now a successful multi-deal closer, sums it up, writing in the jockerbroker.com website: When a deal starts with ‘send ICPO with BCL or Soft Probe, NCND and IMFPA,’ this is ‘broker language.’ Those who know broker languages know this: ‘I’m a joker broker. I don’t have any real products for sale. I don’t know anyone with any, so I was hoping you could give me an irrevocable purchase order with your full financial details disclosed so I can run around with your order and your money in my hands while looking for a product. The next thing you see will be your company and banking details exposed to the world, running around unsecured on the Internet for thousands of other joker brokers.’
Fundamentally, the primary reason experts use such procedures is generally viewed by experts as badly flawed and improper, and as often constituting the biggest obstacles to many a broker or agent in successfully closing deals or making money in the oil trading business, is rather simple. Those procedures and methodologies are inappropriate, unworkable, impracticable, and simple! They are unacceptable and impractical in the real world of the business environment in which they are trying to operate or do business. Consequently, because those procedures and methodologies are of such nature, they invariably fail and inevitably never work.
Why? BBecausesuppliers who receive such stupid procedures from intermediaries or potential buyers, being already sickened by those kinds of procedures, just can’t be bothered to reply to them. Similarly, the end buyers won’t be bothered responding to equally stupid and sickening seller offers. In consequence, the result is that the only people supposedly ‘trading’ are merely the misguided intermediaries passing around make-belief ‘deals’ from one misguided intermediary to another, essentially consisting, for the most part, of shoving around the usual inappropriate or unworkable procedures like the ‘LOI.’ ‘BCL,’ ‘ICPO,’ and unverified ‘POP.’
Indeed, say some experts – most of whom often characterize these procedures in derogatory terms like ‘unsafe,’ ‘impracticable,’ ‘misguided,’ and ‘misused’ – many a time,e even the intermediaries, themselves, who employ these terms and procedures are fully well aware that they have not been able to close a deal for months, even years, of using these badly flawed terms and procedures, and probably never will. By the way, these experts add that these intermediaries will not admit that these methods are flawed and have not gotten them any deals in the past; each new intermediary in the ‘broker chain’ continues to pass the flawed copied methods down the unending ‘daisy chain,’ from one broker/agent intermediary to the other in their make-belief ‘deals’ and ‘trading.’
SO, WHY DO TTHISJOKER BROKER TYPES INTERMEDIARIES STILL PERSIST IN USING THESE FLAWED PROCEDURES, NEVERTHELESS?
Given the central reality we’ve just sketched above, these procedures and methodologies are often inappropriate or unworkable and invariably fail. No income on the part of the Internet intermediaries, a major curious question of immense relevance, is this: Why then? Why, though Internet intermediaries generally refuse to use the correct oil deal procedures, plunge ahead anyway and still engage in doing business using precisely those same badly flawed and unproductive procedures?
Or, to put it another way, what forces or interests urge them to keep conducting business that way, any way, such that, in effect, by conducting business that way, that precise role that such intermediaries play generally makes them, whether wittingly or unwittingly, a prime obstacle on their path, and the path of most other intermediaries, in being able to close deals or to earn income? The basic reason, in a word, is largely related to the personal financial self-interest of the intermediaries and the desperate selfish desire on their part to quickly land a real supplier or secure a commission income by any means whatsoever.
Many insightful experts and keen observers have noted, for example, that many of these arcane procedures being employed by these Internet intermediaries (the LOI, ICPO, BCL, NCND, etc.) are usually not initiated or required by the principal traders (i.e., the buyer or the seller) involved in the business, but are merely the personal inventions and initiatives of the overzealous intermediary types created, designed, improvised, and used largely by them to gain for themselves some undue control in the trading process, and, most importantly for them, to avoid “circumvention” by other intermediaries in a deal, and, thereby to create or justify getting paid a commission income, themselves, in a deal.
THE ILLUSTRATIVE CASE OF THE USE OF THE LOI BY OVERZEALOUS INTERNET SELLERS & INTERMEDIARIES
A good case for illustrating the above point is the frequent use of the so-called “LOI” (Letter of Intent) by Internet agents and intermediaries to initiate trade offers. The uOI (Letter of Intent) document is a common procedure among many present-day Internet brokers, intermediaries, and some sellers. These brokers and intermediaries would frequently demand that any intending or interested buyer first present the LOI document, initiate an interest in a trade offer, or make a purchase.
According to such intermediaries, intending buyers should do so because, they say, by signing such a document at the very beginning of the selling process and handing it over (through them, of course!) to a supposed supplier of a product, that gesture, they claim, constitute a great demonstration of the legitimacy of interest on the part of the would-be buyer, and would be showing that he (she) is “serious” about making a purchase.
Yet, except for these Internet traders and intermediaries who habitually persist in using these procedures, virtually all credible and respected experts in the industry point out – and, to my knowledge, no credible sellers or buyers, or even intermediaries, dispute this fact or have proven otherwise – that this document is essentially a legally worthless, meaningless, and even dangerous piece of paper, which is of no legal force or effect whatsoever, and is lawfully nonbinding and unenforceable upon any of the relevant parties involved in a deal, whether it be the signer of the document (the buyer), or the seller to whom it is given, or the intermediary.
Which, again, logically evokes the original question, WHY? Why, then, do these Internet traders and intermediaries continue to use or insist on prospective buyers using the LOI procedure in initiating their trade deals and offers, even though it is not only a worthless procedure that is of no real effect or legal meaning to any credible buyer, but essentially constitutes a major obstacle to a serious intermediary in ever being able to close a deal, and even though this document squarely falls under the infamous category of the kinds of procedures that are, in the words of Davide Papa and other respected experts on the subject, so “unsafe, inappropriate, impracticable, unworkable and misused,” that “anyone attempting to do business with these types of intermediaries [who use them], will also be unable to close a deal or collect a cent in commissions, no matter how long they trade for or how hard they try.”?
The answer is that the central clue lies directly in reality embedded in this statement by Toby Winson, a keen analyst of the issue, in his essay titled,tJoker-Broker-Land”: “More than 95% of the time, the LOI is written by a broker, not by the seller, and, for the most part, these brokers have just cut and pasted information that they obtained from other brokers. Thus, all of the conflicts and errors in the [LOI] are copied and pass[ed] along from joke to joke.”
In other words, invariably, these intermediaries insist and persist in using the LOI and other similarly ill-fitted joker broker-type documents (when, in fact, all rational reasons would dictate otherwise), mainly for reasons that are simply selfish and somewhat personal and have absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with wanting to do good, legitimate, successful business or wanting to attain any level of wholesomeness relating to the company, itself. Nor anything having to do with securing, preserving, or ” protecting “the legitimate interests of the supplier involved in the deal. Rather, they have everything to do with their own personal, selfish financial self-interest and agenda and with their obsessive concern with landing for themselves a legitimate supplier and buyer of a product and earning a commission.
The point is that the evidence is strong that often, many overzealous, super ambitious, aggressive brokers and agents, especially the obscure or scam-oriented ones, who represent themselves as sellers’ representatives or mandates largely through Internet contacts or communication or even claim to be the actual crude Sellers, themselves, employ the LOI merely as a tool to quickly “corner and box in” a prospective buyer to commit to a purchase deal with them right up front That is, to commit before the prospective buyer may demand that they provide their business profile or show him something tangible to demonstrate that they represent, or are legitimate sellers.
Thus, such intermediaries, or sellers, would persistently demand that the prospective buyers hurry and issue them an LOI right upfront, purportedly as proof that they are “serious” about making the purchase. And, as for the intermediary himself, what he deems as the most critically important matter for him is having that LOI document signed and submitted to him (presumably for the intermediary’s onward transmission of it to the supposed “seller” of the product), the intermediary himself – and NOT necessarily the supposed supplier or seller – shall have quickly “cornered and boxed in” the prospective buyer and secured his commitment to the intermediary, even if not to the buyer.
Many a time, especially in a case involving a supposed seller who is either a fake seller or does not actually have any crude in hand yet or an unscrupulous aspiring seller’s agent or broker who has not acquired a crude supplier (seller) yet, buyers may issue a purported ‘seller’ an LOI only to find out that there is no seller on the other end. This happens a lot in situations where you have a hungry or overzealous agent or facilitator who is still struggling to get a real supplier, and by extracting this LOI from an unsuspecting buyer, this facilitator can commit the buyer to the agent or facilitator only for him than to start hustling to find a seller or supplier.
C. SECOND BASIC WAY IN WHICH SOME MISGUIDED BROKERS & AGENTS CONSTITUTE THE MAIN OBSTACLE
There is another major way in which the new role of the overzealous, misguided Internet broker or agent as an obstacle to successfully doing business frequently manifests. That is the pernicious effects often brought about by the phenomenon of the long string or chain of brokers, agents, and media, which are usually involved in the process, with most of them undercutting each other.
Many a time, the offers presented by an intermediary for an oil deal would come with one long chain after another of too many people who go by different titles, such as “broker,” “mandate,” “agent,” “and facilitator.” But, what is worst is that, partly as a result of the virtual lack of any objective requirements for qualification for wearing the mantle of being a “broker,” agent”, or “middleman” in the trade today, and the ease of entry into Internet trading, such Internet intermediaries generally tend to function in a climate of little or no rules or standards at all and loose or no ethics, in which the “dog eat dog” mentality seem to prevail – a climate in which each broker, agent, or mandate, being only selfishly concerned with just htheiroains and self-interest, is constantly trying to undercut and circumvent the other in deals. TThisoften lleadsto the ultimate detriment of ALL the parties involved in an offer, as ALL of them, as a whole, and not just one party or the other, invariably wind up the losers since NO deal at all is had with any buyer.
To be sure, the issue of an intermediary potentially being “circumvented” by another or by a principal is a legitimate issue worthy of concern and attention by any intermediary involved in a trading deal, more especially in a petroleum deal, which is an industry that is particularly notorious for being a hotbed of get-rich-quick daydreamers and unscrupulous gold diggers who are not particularly noted for their great ethics, high training or education, or great character. Absolutely and categorically so! However, the central point to be made here is that legitimate concern about possible circumvention need not necessarily be allowed, however, to degenerate into obsessive paranoia that should cripple making all progress in a deal and that there is, actually, a more proper and effective way and strategy by which that all-important ‘circumvention’ issue could be better addressed and would virtually eliminate the possibility of circumvention of any intermediary in a deal.
For our present purposes here, what is relevant to note is the characteristic phenomenon of having a long chain of too many people as intermediaries in a deal, each selfish, distrusting and suspicious of the other and unwilling to collaborate and yield needed information to the other, often presents a profound and insurmountable problem, essentially making the intermediary, himself, the major hindrance and obstacle to working out a deal or closing one. Principally, when such a phenomenon rears its unfortunate head in an agreement, it critically slows down the distribution of information or even brings it to an absolute halt, thus completely crippling and ending any prospects of having any agreement. Furthermore, the issue of ‘commission fee splitting’ arrangement becomes more intense and furiously contentious in such situations, as most of the intermediaries in the chains, gripped by fear, selfishness, frustration, and personal greed, tussle over the issue of which group takes how much or what share of the fictional “commission” – a commission which is, in the first place, merely a figment of everyone’s imagination at this point since nothing is yet to be, and nothing may, in fact, ever, ever be in the end, after all that empty noise and hype is made!
This kind of scenario would happen even if, and where, a deal seems genuine and otherwise promising and complete with all the elements of being potentially successful. Thus, a legitimate buyer might need a product and require the broker or agent who brought him the deal to provide certain vital information or authenticate it. But because the buyer, or the intermediary, has to go through a long chain of many hands before he can get the requisite information – a problem which, by the way, a trained, experienced, and self-confident intermediary could easily solve by setting up a ‘step back’ arrangement – it soon makes the deal unable to move forward. The buyer loses trust or otherwise destroys trust among the principals and the intermediaries involved in the agreement, thus effectively killing the deal.
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