Baruch College students won second place at the 4th Annual Chicago Algorithmic Trading Competition, coming ahead of teams from Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard, MIT, and NYU among others.
This year’s contestants were Tushar Chawla’16, Weissman Mathematics; Bell Chen’17, Weissman Mathematics; Jonathan Romero’17, Zicklin Accounting; and, Gehua Zhang’17, Zicklin Mathematics. The team was prepared by Professor Jarrod Pickens, who also coached Baruch’s winning Rotman International Trading Competition in February, and by Baruch MFE student Anik Roy.
“Participating in this competition was a tremendous learning experience for our students,” said Dan Stefanica, co-director of the Master’s in Financial Engineering (MFE) program. “Preparing for the competition taught them about the algorithmic nature of the work, and being there, and winning the options market making case in competition with future traders from top schools around the country built confidence for their soon to be launched careers.”
Baruch’s team won the Options Market Making category, placed third in Cross-listed Shares Trading, and 10th in Algorithmic Sales & Trading. “Most importantly, our trading strategies had moderately high expected returns, but very low risk – we were in top eight in 8 out of 9 trading rounds in the competition,” says Stefanica.
The nation’s primary algorithmic trading competition, the UChicago Midwest Trading Competition serves as an opportunity for quantitatively driven students interested in financial markets to connect with premier financial services firms in the Chicago area.