I am a researcher looking to interview some professional commodities traders in med to large size organizations and need some help with scheduling times that can work with traders before I waste time. Two questions, I'd love some simple insights on:

1) Do pro traders usually have any available time during trading hours or should I only schedule after-hours 40 min interviews?
2) Do pros in firms usually have a lot of quarter-end activity making it better for me to wait until early April to try to recruit and schedule?

Thanks in advance.

This will vary considerably based upon what they are trading. For example commodity trading houses (especially physical ones) will be very different than financial trading houses. Futures traders will be very different than Stock traders.

As somebody with a lot of experience in large energy trading organizations I will say

• Short Term Phyiscal Traders (and schedulers) are very busy in the mornings (pre-scheduling deadlines) but far less busy in the afternoon. (I suspect these people are not your target interview).
• Financial Traders are busiest during what is called 'Regular Trading Hours' which generally mirror the old 'Pit Trading Hours'. In the broadest of terms this is 9am-3pm Eastern.
• The combination of the above generally mean late afternoons are the slow times where there is more a concentration on risk activities than trading activities.
• The exception to the above is when there is a 'pricing window' which sets an 'index price' that is outside of those hours. Many Platt's Oil Index's would be a good example.
• A lot of trading is done on Eastern Time Zones, even when the traded product has a very regional Pacific focus. (West Coast Power Traders get up very early!)
• Product expiration calendars are far more important than month or quarter end. For example Natural Gas futures expire on the 3rd to last business day of the month, and 'Bid Week' is the last 5 business days of the month. Hence for Natural Gas traders the busiest part of the month is the 5th to 2nd last business days of the month.