FRE Maintains Its Winning Streak

Visitors to the Department of Finance and Risk Engineering (FRE) at 12 MetroTech Center could find themselves wondering what kind of elite athletes train there, given the gleaming trophies on display. Look closer, however, and it becomes apparent that while elite accomplishment is, indeed, being celebrated, it’s not that of swimmers or runners, but of the nation’s finest, young financial engineers.

On Friday, November 2, Tandon teams took part in the prestigious annual University Trading Challenge competition, held this year at Bentley University in Boston, where Team Everclear Investments took top place in the Trading Challenge, Foreign Exchange (Forex) Trading Challenge, and Portfolio Management Challenge, before being named overall first-place winner. The team included students Abhirit Kanti, Thomas Haversang, and Jose Fernando Lozano Toledo, and Haversang also garnered the top prize in the category of Individual Portfolio Management.

Last year, another Tandon Team, Alquant, performed in similarly impressive fashion, bringing home the first-place overall trophy.

“Every member on the team had a unique comparative advantage, and that positioned us to excel in multiple categories,” Kanti commented. “We planned our opening trades every night and collectively hedged any speculative positions. The Portfolio and Trading Simulators were an enriching experience that exposed us to what finance in the real world is like. Finally, NYU's resources and faculty of industry practitioners were instrumental in helping us hone our skill. A special thanks to our advisor, Dr. Ronald Slivka, who offered useful insight and made himself readily available for our questions.”

Hearty congratulations are also owed to Tandon students Vansh Mehta, Shishir Agrawal and Aditya Vikram Sharma, team members of Wolves of Wall Street, who landed in second place overall and contributed greatly to Tandon’s dominance in the event, which drew highly skilled teams from schools across the country for the chance to apply their academic skills to real-world trading simulations and financial analysis.