Main Content

Baruch College Continues Their Dominance of the Rotman International Trading Competition

March 3, 2023

Toronto – In-person or online. The format doesn’t matter for the teams from the Master of Financial Engineering program at Baruch College in New York City. For the seventh time, a team representing the program won the Rotman International Trading Competition hosted by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. The nineteenth edition of the competition was held online on February 24 attracting more than 152 participants, including student traders, analysts and risk managers representing 38 universities from across Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

The Baruch College team demonstrated consistently good performance across the diverse challenges finishing first in two of the four cases. A team from the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Economic Sciences placed second, and a team from the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business finished third. The University of Toronto team with Qais Alfar, Ramzi Ashqar, and Anthony Tam, all fourth year Rotman Commerce students, and Juho Kim, a UofT engineering student, placed fourth.

The competition used the resources in the Rotman School’s BMO Financial Group Finance Research and Trading Lab (Rotman FRT-Lab), including the RIT Market Simulator, an order-driven market simulator, which was developed at the Rotman School. The online format allowed student traders from across the world to connect and engage in a competitive format, as well as to network with each other.

“Our simulation-based-learning cases integrate theory and practice, helping students enhance their modelling and coding skills and providing opportunities to practice making decisions when faced with uncertainty about outcomes,” says Prof. Tom McCurdy, Bonham Chair in International Finance, who is also the founder and current academic co-director of the Rotman FRT-Lab.

“The real-time decision-making students experience in the cases helps them to understand the tangible aspects of operating in a competitive environment, including the stresses or emotions of working with time constraints and uncertainty,” says Craig Geoffrey, assistant professor of finance, teaching stream, and the academic co-director of the Rotman FRT-Lab.

“By leveraging our experience in delivering virtual classes and activities over the past three years, participants were incredibly engaged throughout the competition,” said Bachir Chehab, associate director of the Rotman FRT-Lab.

The competition was sponsored by the Rotman Master in Financial Risk Management program.

The Rotman School’s BMO Financial Group Finance Research and Trading Lab is designed to promote experiential learning: integrating markets, data and research with practice in making financial decisions. The competition cases are implemented on the highly acclaimed Rotman Interactive Trader application, a market simulation tool being used in 60 universities and financial institutions around the world. The Lab is utilized by classes in many of the Rotman School’s programs, including its Master of Finance, Master of Financial Risk Management, MBA and Rotman Commerce programs. Further information on the Lab is available at inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/financelab.

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

-30-

For more information:

Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
416-946-3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca