MSQF team earns place in CME Trading Challenge finals

Graduate | Feb 23, 2015 | Gabelli School of Business

A team of five students from Fordham University’s graduate school of business have made it through to the final round of the worldwide CME Trading Challenge.

Weijin Xue, Peng Wang, Tianyue He, Shao Qiu, and Zhuojun Cai, the Master of Science in Quantitative Finance team, finished in the top 10 percent of 500 teams in the preliminary competition, held from Feb. 3 to Feb. 19, and will now move on to the championship. The final round will be held between Feb. 23 and March 6.

The CME Group, which sponsors the competition, bills itself as the “world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace.” As part of the preliminary competition, teams of students began with a $100,000 balance and needed to execute 10 contracts a day for span of the contest. The top 50 teams moved on.

The students could only trade certain futures in agriculture, energy, metals, interest rates, equity index and foreign exchange.

The Fordham team, which ranked 47th out of 500, had a final balance of $140.991.25. Other teams participating and moving onto the finals represent, among others, the University of Memphis, Rice University, Singapore Management University, Purdue University and the University of Western Ontario.

During the finals, contestants will begin with a balance of $250,000.