February 18-20, 2016, LUISS participated in the thirteen annual Rotman International Trading Competition, the most important international applied finance competition held every year in Toronto.
The 2016 LUISS Blue Team included master’s students Raffaele Balzano, Antonio Bozzo, Riccardo Caruso (team leader), Giacomo Cicerani, Matteo Di Iorio and Graziano Piredda took second place out of 52 universities from eleven countries: United States (22 teams), Canada (18), Hong Kong (2), Ireland (2), Italy (2), China (1), South Korea (1), India (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1) and Thailand (1). The second team representing Italy was a team of four students from Milan’s Università Cattolica.
“These results honor our students’ talent and abilities and are of great value to the University. Participating in such a high-level international contest allows our students to meet students from the world’s most prestigious universities and put what they have studied to use in an innovative way,” comments LUISS Rector Massimo Egidi.
The LUISS Blue Team was selected and trained by Emilio Barone, Professor of Stock Market Economics from the Department of Economics and Finance, directed by Professor Stefano Manzocchi. Assisting Professor Barone collaborated with Aldo Ballarini, Alessio Ottaviani, Alessandro D'Atri, Peter Celli and Maria Paola Satolli.
On the first day of the competition (February 18) LUISS Blue Team member Matteo Di Iorio won the Social Outcry Award for his performance in fast and loud trading decisions.
On the second and third days (February 19 and 20) the team participated in six competitions: BP Commodity Trading, S&P Capital IQ Equity Valuation, Quantitative Outcry, Credit Risk (new this year), Sales & Trader, and Algorithmic Trading.
At the end of the competition, the team from Baruch College (City University of New York) took first place. The top five teams were:
- Baruch College
- LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome
- University of Calgary
- Laval University
- University of Waterloo
Other participants included the University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, MIT, New York University, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.
After obtaining first place in both 2014 and 2015, LUISS took home second prize with a score of 45.9 points, or 88.3% of the possible total points. This year’s victory makes LUISS the most successful team in the history of the Rotman International Trading Competition.
“Arriving at second place in RITC 2016 confirms that LUISS has excellent students that are competitive at the international level,” comments Professor Baroni. “This year’s results put us ahead of MIT. We have won the competition twice and came in second place twice, while MIT has won twice and came in second only once. Furthermore, this year’s team took first place in the Algorithmic Trading competition. This part of the challenge was the most technical, and is typically territory of financial engineers from the most prestigious universities."
August 25-27, 2016, LUISS will host the second annual Rotman European Trading Competition (RETC). Expected to participate are 28 teams from top universities representing the 28 European Union member states.