University of Chicago financial mathematics teams recently placed second and eighth in the 2011 Rotman International Trading Competition, a three-day event featuring more than 200 students from 46 universities in Australia, China, Thailand, Europe, the United States and Canada.
Chicago B, consisting of Xuanju He, Yin Chao Lee, Gary Shi and Gracie Qin, took second place, finishing behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chicago A, consisting of Sergey Antipov, Navreet Gill, Greg Martin and Puneet Vohra, finished eighth. The team members are students in UChicago’s Master of Science in Financial Mathematics program. Roger Lee, assistant professor in mathematics, served as the teams’ faculty advisor.
No more than two teams from one institution may compete in the Rotman competition, noted William DeRonne, executive director of UChicago’s financial mathematics program. Each year between 80 to 100 financial mathematics students vie to represent UChicago.
The top 10 teams in this year’s competition, which was hosted by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, were MIT, Chicago B, Baruch College at the City University of New York, Northwestern University, University of Toronto, Texas A&M University, University of Alberta, Chicago A, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Windsor.
he competition featured six distinct trading cases focused on a range of securities and markets, including equity shares, natural gas futures contracts, index futures contracts and high-frequency trading implemented by computer algorithms written by the students. Teams were scored over many different iterations of each case, with their final score comprised of their rankings across all cases.
—Prof. Chuan He
