So you want to be a trader?

http://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...-X_TRADER®-Selected-Exclusive-Platform-Tulane

http://www.freeman.tulane.edu/trading/default.php

 

Overview:


Students from ten universities to compete in finals of mock electronic competition on October 22-23 in New Orleans

The two-phased competition consisting of both remote and on-site mock electronic trading is organized and hosted by Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business.



This year, 33 top business schools entered a total of 87 teams, each comprised of two students, to compete for the best risk-adjusted results using Trading Technologies' X_TRADER platform.

During a two-week qualifying phase, which ended October 1, the students conducted a unique, fast-paced daily remote mock electronic trading of both crude oil and natural gas futures.

This competition was created to closely resemble the trading skills that commercial energy trading firms practice for sustained success in today's highly-volatile markets




Tulane announced the members of the top qualifying 14 teams this week:

Final Results from the Remote two-week qualifying Round

1. Texas A&M
2. Toronto (team4)
3. Texas A&M (team2)
4. Washington University (team3)
5. Texas (team4)
6. Michigan State
7. Tulane (team2)
8. Washington University (team2)
9. Tulane (team3)
10. Rutgers
11. Tulane
12. Virginia
13. Northwestern
14. Oklahoma State
    [/list=1]

1. 
   All are vying for internships with top energy companies and trading firms.
   
   ... The Tulane event is distinctive in that it involves cross-school competition and provides the only trading environment where Graduate and Undergraduate students are judged by energy professionals from companies including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, CitiGroup, Sempra Energy and Sequent Energy. The judges use the same strategies and matrixes as professional traders to evaluate the students.
   
   Winners are determined based on a combination of trading, risk, management, strategy and presentation skills, not solely on profit...
   
   Detailed competition information with results-to-date can be found in the OP's click-throughs - particularly the Tulane U. link.

 

Live auditions to trade for energy firms. Very cool.

 

If you guys have not checked out this PDF is goes into detail how they measure performance. I thought it was very interesting and could probably help others gauge their own performance.

http://www.freeman.tulane.edu/trading/pdf/TulaneEnergyRiskIndex_091310.pdf

http://www.freeman.tulane.edu/trading/pdf/TulaneEnergyRiskIndex_091110.xlsm

This is the excel spreadsheet to run your performance numbers.

 

How does your measure performance compares to theirs ?

 

Those are not real numbers on the spreadsheet. I'm not sure if their data is available.

 

Very cool post Mav, I wish they had this when I was at Loyola!!!

 

Pretty cool. I know NYU and Northwestern both have college level courses for trading. I believe NYU has even added an HFT course.

Tulane, thats Tim Sykes school.

 

Winners of The 2010 Tulane Energy Trading Competition October 22 & 23 Final Round:

1. Rodrigo Polezel - Rutgers University
2. Robert Ettinger - The University of Texas at Austin
3. Alex Santos - Rutgers University
4. Michael Grubbs - Tulane University
5. Rory Sandstrom - Northwestern University
   [/list=1]

1. 
   The format for members of the Final Round:
   * This portion of the competition was individual trading, NOT team trading
   * Each student made a presentation before and after trading to the judges
   * There were two trading sessions. The morning session was Natural Gas trading and the afternoon session was Crude Oil trading.
   * Winners were determined by the Judges based on a combination of trading, risk management, strategy, and presentation skills.
   * Cases for the final competition were sent to each finalist via email.
   
   The approximate value of the first place prizes is $99,900
   
   Internships/Jobs:
   The process of providing internships and jobs is a private discussion between the candidates and the participating firms. The intention of the competition is to promote networking, internship and job opportunities.
   
   http://www.freeman.tulane.edu/trading/default.php
   http://www.freeman.tulane.edu/trading/2010/eventformat.php
   http://www.freeman.tulane.edu/trading/2010/Final.php
   (includes details of cash and other prizes to the five individual trader/winners)

 

Sorry if this intrudes on the thread, but somewhat related. When I was at the U of Minn. a couple of decades ago we had a teacher who did a markets class, and ran a trading contest in each class. You would report purchase/sell prices for equities, commodities, options to him and he would verify you could have entered or exited at the prices you claim. You had to call him with the trade before it would have traded your price supposedly. One kid turned in a 2500% + return in a quarter, so the teacher thought the kid was god. He took the kid and $25,000 of his own money, got a room in a hotel in Chicago, and they traded from the room calling in trades to a broker they set up with when they got there. Needless to say they burned $20,000 before the teacher realized it was a bad idea. No money management, and it became quickly apparent the kid had been lucky as heck.
The same teacher offered me up to $5000 dollars to get Sam Walton to come up and speak to the business school, but sadly all I could do was talk to one of his sons, who was in no way going to let me get through to his Dad.