A team of five University of Stirling postgraduate students achieved tenth place in the 2023 Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group University Trading Challenge, beating 411 teams worldwide.
In the Challenge, teams trade futures contracts on a variety of asset classes, in a simulated online environment, with the same software used by professional traders.
The Stirling team, called Fortune 5, took part in the competition while attending classes and used WhatsApp to share breaking news stories with each other.
All teams started the Challenge with an initial virtual capital of $500,000. A month later, Fortune 5 had generated an additional $453,215.70 by trading the US stock market, soybean oil and crude oil.
Team Lead and MSc Digital Banking and Finance student Sahil Parashare said: “We traded cautiously at the start of the competition but, as we became more familiar with the trading platform and researched market trends, we placed more trades as we developed confidence in our trading strategies. We stuck to our principles throughout and managed to avoid getting too emotional.”
Dr Kevin Campbell, Director of the MSc Investment Analysis, said of the team’s achievement: “The team members deserve a lot of credit for their success in quickly understanding the trading process and the factors affecting trends in commodity prices, while also attending regular lectures and seminars”.
The students were (left to right):
- MSc Investment Analysis student Kunal Sharma
- MSc Digital Banking and Finance student Sahil Parashare
- MSc Investment Analysis student Yojana Patil
- MSc Digital Banking and Finance student Anushree Rane
- MSc International Accounting and Finance student Rishabh Gulati