Media Releases

International Financial Traders Compete at the Rotman School

February 22, 2012

TORONTO, ON –Once again the best finan­cial stu­dent traders from uni­ver­si­ties around the world will gath­er this week at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment to vie for the cham­pi­onship at the ninth annu­al Rot­man Inter­na­tion­al Trad­ing Com­pe­ti­tion. Par­tic­i­pants include stu­dents from insti­tu­tions in Cana­da, Unit­ed States, Thai­land, Aus­tralia, Italy, Unit­ed King­dom and Ire­land.

The three-day com­pe­ti­tion, begin­ning on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 23, enables stu­dents to apply their class­room knowl­edge on sim­u­lat­ed trad­ing cas­es that close­ly mim­ic dif­fer­ent aspects of real-world mar­kets. The com­pe­ti­tion will be run over the Rot­man Finan­cial Research and Trad­ing Lab net­work using pro­pri­etary soft­ware called Rot­man Inter­ac­tive Trad­er.  The soft­ware is cur­rent­ly being sold and used by over 35 insti­tu­tions includ­ing uni­ver­si­ties, pen­sion funds, and finan­cial man­age­ment firms world­wide.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to wel­com­ing the par­tic­i­pants to the Rot­man School and to this glob­al com­pe­ti­tion. Devel­op­ing our own cas­es allows us to present chal­lenges to the stu­dents that are per­ti­nent to cur­rent mar­ket trends,” says Kevin Mak, man­ag­er of the Rot­man Finan­cial Research and Trad­ing Lab and chief archi­tect of Rot­man Inter­ac­tive Trad­er.

“Our cas­es are designed to eval­u­ate stu­dents’ strate­gies and deci­sion mak­ing when faced with risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties in volatile mar­kets,” adds Rot­man Prof. Tom McCur­dy, who is also the Bon­ham Chair in Inter­na­tion­al Finance and the aca­d­e­m­ic direc­tor of the lab.

This year, stu­dents will com­pete in the fol­low­ing cas­es: BP Com­modi­ties Trad­ing, CIBC Algo­rith­mic Trad­ing, Thom­son Reuters QED Trad­ing, Sales & Trad­ing, Options Trad­ing, and Quan­ti­ta­tive Out­cry.  These cas­es will chal­lenge the stu­dents in their abil­i­ty to apply asset pric­ing mod­els to under­stand key val­u­a­tion and arbi­trage char­ac­ter­is­tics across dif­fer­ent mar­kets.

The com­pe­ti­tion is gen­er­ous­ly sup­port by BP Cana­da, CIBC, Thom­son Reuters and S&P Cap­i­tal IQ.

Com­plete details regard­ing the com­pe­ti­tion are avail­able online at http://ritc.rotman.utoronto.ca/index.asp and watch a video on the com­pe­ti­tion online.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:
Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca

Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter — www.twitter.com/rotmanschool