Rotman International Trading Competition 2012

[Andy Nguyen]

How is 2012 competition compared to last year, in term of the level of competition, the cases, etc?

 

[Yike Lu]

Overall I liked the cases more (more variety) and it's definitely more competitive.

 

[fredric]

Congrats guys, awesome work. I didn't get a chance to see you guys after the CN Tower but feel free to contact me with feedback/details/suggestions for the future. Or post them here if you want to have a public dialogue about any of it. (I'm tired of having conversations with competitors about "how predictable a random walk is"....)

Kevin

Kevin, thanks for organizing this great event! It is one of my best experience in my undergrad life. Looking forward to RITC 2013. I'll definitely try to come back if I get admitted into a MFE program.

 

[Lyosha]

How is 2012 competition compared to last year, in term of the level of competition, the cases, etc?

First off, all the credit in the world should go to Kevin and his staff for putting together such a terrific event. What they have managed to pull off in Toronto for the last two years that I was there was mind blowing, and, in my opinion, definitely the premier university trading competition out there.

Overall, I think this one was a lot more stressful with more wrenches thrown at the competitors. But it was also a lot of fun.

I liked a lot of the new features of the new software, but there are of course things that I would have preferred had been done differently. I think that some of the negatives that I saw were just due to the new-ness of the new release of the software (which, I should mention, is definitely a step up from the old software).

Kevin - if you want more specific and in depth feedback, you can shoot me an email or PM, and I'll be happy to provide it.

 

[Lyosha]

Kevin, thanks for organizing this great event! It is one of my best experience in my undergrad life. Looking forward to RITC 2013. I'll definitely try to come back if I get admitted into a MFE program.

What team were you on?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Congrats guys, awesome work. I didn't get a chance to see you guys after the CN Tower but feel free to contact me with feedback/details/suggestions for the future. Or post them here if you want to have a public dialogue about any of it. (I'm tired of having conversations with competitors about "how predictable a random walk is"....)

Kevin

Maybe you can provide access in future events so I can send my press people up there to live cover the competition.

 

[fredric]

What team were you on?

Waterloo A

 

[Yike Lu]

Waterloo A

You guys did well, congratulations are in order.

 

[AndrewChang]

Waterloo A

congratulations fredric! sorry we didn't meet at the competition but hope to see you guys next year!

 

[KevinMak]

Andy: would be happy to have you and any press up there if they're interested. Will be in touch next year.

Main difference of the competition is that we're continually making it more difficult, as schools learn and pass down the knowledge to future teams. Designing events that are more difficult and challenging ultimately are exponentially more challenging and difficult from our perspective, as there's increased levels of complexity modelling the dynamics of the case to make it 'profitable, but not too profitable'. We also have to very carefully balance the strategies so that no dominant strategies exist (i.e. I can make more money doing X, than doing W, Y or Z at the same time- BP case comes to mind here.)

The software is extremely more robust than the older version of our software, so now we can focus on tweaking and polishing it on the UI side of things.

We're really excited to be starting up an online trading league for people to meet and trade different cases on a semi weekly or monthly basis, I'll have more to announce for that later- but I think it'll be a lot of fun for people who want to try out more strategies and compete.

Thanks for the kudos Alexei. We know people spend a lot of time and money to come to Toronto and we feel we have to 'up our game' to make it worthwhile- glad to hear that it is.

 

[Yike Lu]

Main difference of the competition is that we're continually making it more difficult, as schools learn and pass down the knowledge to future teams. Designing events that are more difficult and challenging ultimately are exponentially more challenging and difficult from our perspective, as there's increased levels of complexity modelling the dynamics of the case to make it 'profitable, but not too profitable'. We also have to very carefully balance the strategies so that no dominant strategies exist (i.e. I can make more money doing X, than doing W, Y or Z at the same time- BP case comes to mind here.)

You guys did a very good job with this, and it must be very difficult especially with a case like BP.

We're really excited to be starting up an online trading league for people to meet and trade different cases on a semi weekly or monthly basis, I'll have more to announce for that later- but I think it'll be a lot of fun for people who want to try out more strategies and compete.

This sounds amazing. We will get to see trading strategy evolution happening much faster with a league.

Thanks for the kudos Alexei. We know people spend a lot of time and money to come to Toronto and we feel we have to 'up our game' to make it worthwhile- glad to hear that it is.

I definitely felt this year's cases were more interesting. Excellent job all around. I would go every year if I could.

 

[JulianT]

KEVIN! Thanks for having us again! Don't worry about the random walk haters, they are chasing dragons

The team next to me during options were doing technical analysis... I found that funny

 

[Yike Lu]

Hey, are you Julian from Concordia?

 

[JulianT]

Indeed I am.

 

[Yike Lu]

Good job dude, and good drinking with you. Where'd you go after Hemingway's?

 

[JulianT]

Thanks, congrats to you too once again. We ended up going back to the hotel, some of the volunteers brought some absinthe. Gama and Alex joined us for a bit.

 

[John]

2012 Rotman International Trading Competition Official Scorecard
http://ritc.rotman.utoronto.ca/documents/Final Scorecard RITC 2012.pdf

Just received words that the Baruch MFE team has won the 2012 Rotman International Trading Competition which just ended a few hours ago. Their second team also finished in Top 5 out of 50 teams:

1. Baruch College (Financial Engineering Program)
2. Guido Carli University of Rome
3. University of Chicago (Financial Mathematics Program)
4. Baruch College (Financial Engineering Program)
5. University of Waterloo (Quantitative Finance Program)

Others:
7. Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management )
19. Duke University
22. Rutgers University (Financial Mathematics Program)
28. Boston University (Financial Mathematics Program)
33. MIT (last year's winners)
40. Columbia University (Financial Mathematics Program)