Triumphs in Trading

The University Trading Challenge (UTC), which is open to students in finance and economics programs from across the entire nation, provides a close simulation of real-world trading and allows participants to test their abilities to analyze, strategize, make decisions, and give presentations.

According to the contest’s organizers, students “get an invaluable glimpse into the real world of the capital markets as well as true insight into themselves and their suitability to a finance career.” If so, teams from NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Department of Finance and Risk Engineering proved themselves exceptionally suitable at the 2015 competition, held in November at Temple University’s Fox Business School, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Despite a crowded and competitive field, the Tandon participants had podium finishes in an impressive five of the nine contests that made up the event.

Team NYU Alpha (consisting of team captain Jae Woo Lee, Boubacar Diallo, Alex Shchepetkin, and Ching-Che Chiang) won top honors in the Treasury Challenge, which requires contestants to simulate managing the currency risk for a major Fortune 100 company. They also placed a respectable second for best overall team performance, and Jae Woo Lee was named best individual forex (foreign exchange) trader.

Another NYU team, the FRE Tigers, (consisting of captain Chung-Jay Cheng, Tze-Cheng Wang, Wan-Yu Shih, and Shan Hsuan Tsou) took the top spot in team portfolio trading management, with Wang winning an individual trophy as portfolio management champion.

The Tandon trading teams were advised by Adjunct Professor Roy S. Freedman, the author of the highly regarded textbook Introduction to Financial Technology and the founder of the consulting firm Inductive Solutions, who is often called upon to serve as an expert witness in litigation involving high frequency trading (and who is himself an alum of the school). 

“My first comment to them after the event was ‘Good Work! Congratulations!’” Freedman said. “Then I reminded them that their next challenge was going to be to go out and win with real money.”