UTRGV Students Take Trading Competition

Group wins first at international competition

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UTRGV Students Take Trading Competition

Christopher Martinez, Michael Villarreal and Jose Naveja with faculty advisor Bruno Arthur (UTRGV Photo)
Christopher Martinez, Michael Villarreal and Jose Naveja with faculty advisor Bruno Arthur (UTRGV Photo)

A group of undergraduate business students from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley recently beat out more than 500 teams from 37 countries to capture their first ever championship win in the 15th annual CME Group Trading Challenge.

Christopher Martinez of McAllen, Michael Villarreal of Rio Grande City and Jose Naveja of Progreso finished the competition with a total of $706,585. They beat out second-place competitor Kansas State University, who earned $533,910.

The Trading Challenge is a complimentary four-week electronic trading competition. During the competition, teams of university students trade CME Group products from different asset classes. The trading environment is simulated, and works on a real-time professional trading platform provided by CQG.

The UTRGV team, named UTRGV-EDINBURG-2, said they were guided and prepared well by Bruno Arthur. The lecturer II in UTRGV Economics and Finance is the faculty advisor for the first-place team. To prepare for the challenge, they also took relevant courses, such as financial derivatives, or money and banking, in the Department of Economics and Finance.

A total of three undergraduate teams from the Edinburg Campus, one undergraduate team from the Brownsville Campus, and one graduate team at the MBA level, represented UTRGV at the competition.

In 2017, the UTRGV undergraduate team ranked 18th out of 595 participants in the CME Trading Challenge.

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