One of London's top energy traders just resurfaced in Jersey after leaving BlueCrest

It's been a while, but Alex Watson's non-compete is over and he is back in action. The action will now be occurring in Jersey.

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Writing on LinkedIn, Watson says he is now chief investment officer for Europe at Caerus Commodities, a Houston energy trading house with a focus on battery energy storage. 

Watson declined to comment for this article. 

Before he appeared at Caerus, Watson was a senior portfolio manager at BlueCrest, for whom he was also based in Jersey. We reported previously that he left BlueCrest in February, although Watson says he's non-compete began in January '26. Bloomberg reported in February that BlueCrest let go of both Watson and his six person team after extreme price moves "dented" their profitability.

Watson is a natural gas trader. Before being seduced by Mike Platt, he spent just over two years as head of natural gas trading at EDF Energy. Prior to that. he worked for Citi and Total Gas and Power. 

David Hawkins, a gas trading strategist who worked with Watson at both BlueCrest and EDF, has joined him Caerus and is thought to be in Jersey too. Krzysztof Nowak, a former BlueCrest quant also resurfaced at Caerus in August, and is head of execution there. 

It's not clear whether Watson intends to rehire the remainder of his BlueCrest gas trading team. Nor is clear whether Watson now intends to branch out into battery storage trading. 

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