Pulse
March 2, 2026
Fred Demler: Remembering an industry giant
Written by Greg Wittbecker
Fred Demler, an industry veteran whose career spanned decades, recently passed away.
The London Metal Exchange provided a nice message, which I will share before providing my own.
“With great regret, this notice informs LME members and the broader metals community of the death of Dr. Fred Demler.
Fred was a long-standing, dedicated and widely respected member of the metals industry and was an honorary member of the LME for the last nine years.
From 2018 until his retirement in 2022, Fred served as executive vice president and global head of metals at ED&F Man Capital Markets. Prior to this, Fred was head of Mmetals at INTL FCStone for six years, and global head of commodities at MF Global from 1993 to 2011.
In 2017, Fred set up Demler Hedge Advisory LLC, sharing his expertise to help corporate enterprises manage their metals price risks. He was also an associate partner of the metals price risk management consultancy, The Metals Risk Team. Fred served on the boards of the American Copper Council and the Copper Club and was a founding member of the Mineral Economics Management Society.
Fred had a PhD in Mineral Economics from Pennsylvania State University. He was awarded lifetime achievement awards by S&P Global Platts and the Albert Nelson Marquis Who and was a Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Fellow.
Fred’s impact on my career
I first met Fred in 1985, when I was recruited to join Cargill’s C. Tennant and Sons’ metal trading group in Minneapolis. He was leading research at Drexel Burnham at the time. His work on fundamentals and metal trading were a must read for someone entering the trade with little experience. Fred’s work was detailed, complicated, and yet understandable. These Drexel reports were timeless. I retain many of them today as reference works.
Fred was kind enough to present remarks on aluminum options trading to a CRU Group-sponsored seminar in Atlanta in 2019 that I hosted. I surprised him by pulling out a copy of one of his classic pieces on option trading written in 1986. It was still relevant and educational now as it was then.
There was never a time when Fred and his team did not have time to patiently talk me through complex trading ideas such as binary options, the advent of algorithmic trading, or how to “sort LME warrants.” His institutional knowledge was immense, offered freely, and in language that made it understandable. In this growing age of AI dependency, it was nice to talk to a human being to get the facts. I try to emulate what Fred taught me in my own dealings with clients today.
Fred, you will be sorely missed for your brilliance in our industry and your humanity. Thank you for imparting some of it to me over the past 40+ years.
