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"The CME Group Commodities Trading Challenge" invites college students to participate in its annual trading competition, "Back to the Futures." The competition will expand to include as many as 20 schools, grouped to invite regional rivalries. They will fight for big prize money and internships in a mock-trading competition that mirrors the high-stakes dynamics of trading commodities futures contracts. The concept is to devise a competition that more closely resembles the experience of a real-life energy trader and risk manager that would include both the trader employed by an energy company as well as the trader on the floor of the exchange. This two-tiered competition will give students an introduction to the full spectrum of the trading experience, from being a customer initiating a trade by making a decision to being the floor broker who fills the customer's order. It will give the participants a cohesive introduction to the world of energy trading and hedging in a real world setting.
Phase One:
Each team is given $100,000 of "money" with which to trade crude oil and gold futures. Each team will be equipped with CQG charting and trading platforms. Students will be responsible for setting up a team to trade the account and for determining who has authority to place the trades and how trading decisions will be made. Students will be responsible for organizing their team to best utilize the available talent. A preliminary meeting with one of the competition advisors will help give students some guidance on how to organize their team with division of responsibilities, etc. Students will understand how risk is managed within companies. As part of this team organization, each team should have no more than two "designees" who have authority to execute trades in order to reduce confusion. Each "designee" from each team will be authorized to execute the team's trades through the CQG Trader platform.
In Phase one, students experience real time, electronic trading on the CQG platform. Students will be able to learn the techniques to trading crude oil and gold futures. The teams with the four highest account balances at the end of the Preliminary Round will advance to the National Finals Round. The national champion will be determined by the team with the highest account balance in the National Finals Round. Last year, the winning team was awarded a $4,000 scholarship. We expect the scholarship winnings to be more this year.
Phase Two:
The Student Finance Association at the University of Houston will host an Open Outcry competition, which will be held on the main campus in the Bauer School of Business. The students at the university have hosted this type of competition for the past eight years. The Open Outcry Challenge is a simulated trading competition where student competitors are expected to fill hypothetical buy and sell orders on behalf of their clients, similar to how the traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floors operate. Participants will be judged on how well they trade in a simulated market, and how well they execute their customers' orders. Our mission is to provide student members with a valuable supplement to the Finance program, involving a greater understanding of financial markets beyond their textbooks and creating a student network that will offer solidarity, leadership, and career opportunities. The students will have a chance to connect what they learn inside the classrooms, and apply their knowledge in real life situations that exist in the trading world. Additionally, our intent is to provide an effective communication link between the business community, our student members and the university faculties to enable our members as they endeavor to locate and obtain positions in the field of Finance. Our competition was a roaring success last year and this year we expect even greater success as we expand the opportunity to a larger pool of universities. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is a large adherent of this event, helping to structure these competitions for both this year and previous years.
The 2006 Video can be found
here. The 2007 Video can be found
here. The 2008 Video can be found here. ________________________________________________________________________
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