Baruch College Claims Two Top 10 Finishes at Traders@MIT Fall Intercollegiate Competition

Fourth year in a row that Baruch students capture second place or better

November 16, 2018

Once again, Baruch College students faced teams from top schools at the annual Traders@MIT Intercollegiate Competition in Massachusetts and brought home victories.

Out of 75 teams, Baruch claimed two top 10 finishes—2nd and 7th place—competing against such institutions as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Chicago.

​“Their performance continues to show that our students are extremely dedicated and can compete against the best and brightest,” said Jarrod Pickens, PhD, a math lecturer at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences who coaches the students.

Winning Steak Continues

This year’s wins represent the fourth consecutive year that Baruch students won second place or better in the overall standings—a streak that began in 2015 with a 2nd and 5th place, and continued in 2016 and 2017 when team members captured 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in both years.

Held this year on November 11, the full-day event is the largest trading competition of its kind in the U.S, which attracts 150 well-prepared students primed to pit their trading strategies against each other head to head. Each two-person team competes in the three rigorous sessions: algorithmic options trading, dark pools (sales and trading), and stock price modeling.

In addition to claiming the 2nd and 7th place wins, the students also grabbed top places in two sessions:

• 1st and 2nd place in options trading
• 2nd place in the dark pools trading

All ten participating students are undergraduates in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences:

• Xinyi Liu – Mathematics, ’20
• Cheng Ni – Mathematics, ’20
• Man Jin – Mathematics, ’19
• Zeqi Wang – Financial Mathematics, ’19
• Serdar Doruk – Mathematics, ’18
• Yiming Zhang – Mathematics, ’20
• Kai Ge – Financial Mathematics, ’19
• Zekun Ji – Financial Mathematics, ’21
• Kaizhen Tan – Financial Mathematics, ’18
• Suguru Kaneda – Financial Mathematics, ’19

‘We Were Highly Motivated’

To be ready, the Baruch students practice in several activities held by the Baruch Traders Club, including in-house trading competitions and training sessions. Participants also sought the advice of seniors who previously competed in the event.

“We were highly motivated before and in the competition since we knew that we were competing with some of the best institutions like MIT and Harvard,” said Cheng Ni and Xinyi Liu in an email interview, who finished second overall out of 75 teams.

“It was very exciting and meaningful that we had the chance to meet some students from other institutions and learn something from them. We were delighted with the final results because it meant our efforts were not in vain.”

Competitions to Careers

The benefits of diligent training and ongoing coaching reach far beyond the competition. Suguru Kaneda, who will work at Bloomberg as a data scientist following graduation in 2019, said participating in this event, as well as other traders club competitions, helped him prepare for job interviews.

“Trading interviews are very competitive, but employers were very impressed that I was knowledgeable and experienced with options trading and coding which is something other job candidates have never done before hands-on rather than reading a textbook,” Kaneda said.

“Even though the Baruch Trading Club is heavily reliant on math, I think anyone who enjoys chess, poker, or logical games that involve a lot of probabilities will enjoy joining the Traders Club. It requires you to be able to read and think about probabilities and outcomes that will help you beat your competition.”

Trading Competitions Achievements

Baruch has fared well in several trading competitions recently:

• In September 2017, four students in the Master of Science in Financial Engineering program won third place in Datathon.
• In September 2017, a Baruch team claimed victory in the sixth annual International Association for Quantitative Finance competition, in a three-way tie.
• In April 2017, four students netted first place in the 5th annual University of Chicago Midwest Trading Competition.

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