The Rutgers students beat out nearly 600 teams from 35 countries in the futures trading competition.
NEW BRUNSWICK -- A team of Rutgers University students doubled its money in the futures market and crushed the competition to win one of the world's biggest financial championships.
The team of five Rutgers graduate students beat out nearly 600 teams from around the globe in the simulated trading contest to take first place in the CME Group Trading Challenge earlier this month, organizers said.
Rutgers is the first U.S. university to win the futures trading competition in three years, organizers said. College teams from Singapore, Turkey and Spain took home the title in previous years.
"I am excited that our team's participation and commitment resulted in a first place win in this year's competition," said Ronnee Ades, the Rutgers team's adviser and director of the master of quantitative finance program at Rutgers Business School. "The CME Group Trading Challenge is a great opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience with financial markets, and complements what they learn in our academic program."
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The students on the winning team were: Zhihao Zhou, Jiachen Chu, Chengran Su, Cheng Xu and Wanyu Zhang. All five are international students from China enrolled in the graduate program at Rutgers Business School.
Though the money they invested and earned in the competition was simulated cash, the Rutgers students get to take home $1,500 each in real prize money, organizers said. They will also get to attend a one-day market education conference in Chicago in April, organizers said.
In the preliminary round, teams from 35 countries were given $100,000 each in simulated cash to trade cattle, oil, soybean, gold and other futures on a live electronic trading platform over 10 days.
The Rutgers team ranked in the top 10 percent of teams in the preliminary competition and advanced to final round, where the teams were given $250,000 in a simulated account to see how much money they could make in the futures market over two weeks.
The Rutgers students, who dubbed their team the "Oriental Lions," more than doubled their money, ending up with $529,785. That was more than $100,000 more than the nearest competition, according to the leader board.
Rutgers was followed by Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Imperial College London and California State University- Chico.
CME Group, a Chicago-based company that runs trading marketplaces, has sponsored the college competition for 14 years as a way to educate students about the derivatives markets and the global economy.
Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at " on Facebook.