New Competition to Test Students’ Trading Skills

Teams of graduate students will test their ability to maximize profits while keeping their cool in the first-ever Berkeley-Haas Trading Competition Sept. 12.

The virtual trading competition, hosted by the Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering Program, will feature real-time trading across a number of asset classes. Individual trading events will simulate scenarios where there is opportunity for profit or loss and will challenge participants’ ability to handle a wide range of market conditions. Students will use the same order management system utilized at leading investment banks and hedge funds.

No real money is involved and there is no cost to compete. Students can sign up at https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eIMGiGrDvJgmxUx.

"The decision to have this competition stems from the strong interest shown by alumni in the past, especially from the class of 2013," says Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the Master of Financial Engineering Program. "It is also a great opportunity to bring together students from other programs at Haas, including MBA students, and other units on campus."

The competition is open to graduate students from Haas, electrical engineering and computer sciences, industrial engineering and operations research, chemical and biomolecular engineering, mathematics, statistics, and economics. Teams of two students each will compete against each other.

The competition will begin with an orientation and Q&A session with refreshments from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Sept. 12. Trading will begin at 11 a.m. and last until 3 p.m. in the MFE Lab in room 270 on the second floor of the Haas library. Winners will be announced shortly after the last trade.

Practice servers were made available 24 hours a day 7 days a week starting Thursday, Aug. 29, and all cases will be available by Sept. 6.

More information on the Berkeley-Haas Trading Competition is available at http://mfe.berkeley.edu/academics/trading.html.