The desk faced three problems that internal resources alone could not solve:

• With no internal policy expertise, there was no reliable way to distinguish between a genuine structural shift in the market and short-lived political noise. Headlines moved prices, but interpreting what they meant for positioning required knowledge the team had not yet built in-house.
• Building a robust supply-demand model from scratch would take time the desk did not have. Short-term signals needed a fundamental anchor, and the team needed one it could trust while developing its own view over time.
• There was no one inside the organisation to challenge the desk’s thinking before positions were taken. The team needed direct access to specialists who understood the market and the policy process well enough to interrogate their views with them.