Recap:
Saturday February 4th, the McGill Investment Club (“MIC”) hosted the Inaugural McGill Trading Simulation. 235 undergraduate and graduate students comprising 49 teams from a dozen leading U.S. and Canadian schools transformed the William Shatner Ballroom of McGill University into an exuberant trading pit. Participants traded stocks, puts and calls of ten fictitious companies. Traders cheered on their positions as runners and data imputers processed the trades, which were initiated by filling out trading stubs. Screens encircling the pit provided the traders with news releases and provided them with real-time stock and option quotes, 52-week high and lows as well as Year-to-Date stock price charts. Traders were also provided with profiles, candle-stick charts, operating and financial information of the companies, allowing them to incorporate technical and fundamental analysis into their decision-making. A network integrating 35 computers and 72 volunteers provided the market.
MIT, Princeton and University of Michigan were attending from the U.S., and from Ontario,
York and Queen’s each sent four teams.
HEC, UQAM, UQO, UQTR, Sherbrooke and McGill filled the remaining spots on the trading floor. The breadth of participants from across North America makes the Inaugural McGill Trading Simulation amongst the most successful in both the U.S. and Canada. Sponsor’s of the Inaugural McGill Trading Simulation were, La Caisse de Dépôt et de Placement du Québec, Disnat and Credit Suisse.
First place went to Université du Québec à Trois-Rivière. Sherbrooke finished in the second spot and UQO finished third, winning $1,000, $600 and $400 respectively. The Québec schools successes can be attributed to their high-risk strategies: concentrating their assets in a few of positions, which they levered with the use of options. The Ontario and American schools took a more conservative approach, posting more consistent but less spectacular gains.
The McGill Investment Club’s goal was to bring to life both the excitement and anxiety of a real trading floor while offering students the possibility of applying what they learnt in class in an amusing setting. With the success of yesterday’s event, The McGill Investment Club hopes to make their simulation an annual affair.
