Freeman takes home third-place honors at trading competition

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A team of Freeman School students traveled to New York in December and came away with third-place honors at the 2011 University Trading Challenge.

University Trading Challenge
Freeman students Trevor Plath, Mario Cano, Savanna Speciale and Edward Hall, left to right, took home the third-place trophy at December’s University Trading Challenge in New York. Also pictured is Bryant Nielson, managing director of CapitalWave Inc., organizer of the competition.

The annual competition, sponsored by CapitalWave Inc., a leading provider of training solutions for the capital markets and finance community, took place at Baruch College’s Wasserman Trader Floor on Dec. 9 and 10.

In placing third, the Freeman School team — Mario Cano (MNRG ’12), Edward Hall (BSM ’11, MNRG ’12), Trevor Plath (MNRG ’12) and Savanna Speciale (BSM ’12, MNRG ’12) — beat out teams from a dozen prestigious business schools.

The competition required students to demonstrate their trading abilities in three distinct categories: Long-term portfolio management, short-term trading and a finance case study.

The Freeman team earned a perfect score in the case study portion of the competition, but it wasn’t enough to overtake Quebec’s Université Laval, which won first place, and the University of Virginia, which placed second.

Other schools participating in the competition  included Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, New York University, University of Toronto, DePaul , Boston College, University of Delaware, CUNY, Northeastern, Hofstra, University of Minnesota and Syracuse.

Freeman actually fielded two teams in the competition. In addition to the third-place team, a Freeman team featuring Sam Capone (MNRG ’12), Aaron Heider (MNRG ’12), James Orth (MNRG ’12) and Jacklyn Sparling (BSM ’12) also participated.

The University Trading Challenge was the first of a series of trading events Freeman students are participating in this year. In February, a team of students will head to Toronto for the annual Rotman International Trading Competition at the University of Toronto, where they’ll compete in open outcry, electronic and algorithmic trading. Tulane is also participating in the CME Commodities Trading Challenge, an online competition in which teams trade gold and crude futures using live market data.