Finance Students Learn Real-World Skills in 2023 Bloomberg Trading Challenge
Students from NJIT’s Martin Tuchman School of Management finished in the top quarter of 2,000 teams in the 2023 Bloomberg Trading Challenge, in turn learning how real-world trading works by earning as much profit as possible in six weeks.
It was the first time NJIT participated in the challenge. Doctoral student Fuqin Zhou was the team captain, leading undergraduates Alan Lan, Christopher Vergara and Minxing Wang — the latter studying at NJIT from Shanghai Lixin University — and with all four advised by Assistant Professor Jinghua (Carolyn) Wang.
The students were selected from 12 applicants in Wang’s course, FIN-417, Investments Management. Team members were also required to pass an online certificate course, Bloomberg Market Concepts, which refined their skills at the investment terminal.
Each team had a virtual $1M to invest from Oct. 9 through Nov. 17. Zhou, who already earned a finance degree in China and now resides in Harrison, is in the second year of her Ph.D. program for business data science. She knew the theory of using the Bloomberg terminal but didn’t have much hands-on experience. “I learned how to use it first to trade and make transactions, and second how to use the terminal to search the news and also the fundamental information and financial reports,” she explained. “I can search for companies in a whole supply chain, I can search the suppliers and those customers, all in the same terminal.”
Zhou said that as team captain, she also taught the undergraduates about portfolio management, showing them how to compute real-world data that they might not have seen beyond a classroom.
“I think this is very good for our students. They learn from each other in the classroom, but haven't got connections outside the classroom, so I think this is a great opportunity for our students to use classroom knowledge to practice in the real business world, with real data and information,” said Wang, the finance professor.
“When we talk about investment to our students, we need to distinguish the purpose of the investment, either for the long term, short term or intermediate terms. If you want to save money for your retirement, that's your long-term goal. But if you want to save money just to purchase a concert ticket — you want to see Taylor Swift — that's a short-term goal,” she noted.
Team members received their own key to the school’s Ray Cassetta Financial Analysis Laboratory to practice their skills off-hours. Wang added that they focused their investments in companies which prioritize environmental, social and governance strategies, and that she is hopeful they'll also apply such strategies to their personal investments after college.