Top Trader Alex Zhang (right) is awarded an internship in Beijing
Singaporean Student Wins uuni TopTrader Competition
Look out New York Stock Exchange because the next generation of trading whizz-kids are not from the Ivy Leagues, but from Singapore, London, Calcutta and Geneva. The final moments of the 'live' Top Trader competition, which pitted talented student traders from universities around the world against each other, has now come to its dramatic conclusion and Alex Zhang from the National University of Singapore (NUS) emerged triumphantly with the £5,000 first prize.
There were over 4,000 registered student traders in the competition from over 60 top universities around the world including Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, LSE, Yale, Princeton, National University of Singapore and the IITs and IIMs in India. Umar Abdulmajid from Imperial University in London came second and Fabienne Berclaz from HEG Geneva came third. Another two Genevan students figured in the top ten and students from IIM Kolkata, Oxford, Cambridge and other UK universities rounded out the top ten.
The university rankings - based on the average score of students from each university - was won by Imperial College, followed by IIM Kolkata, NUS, York University and HEG Geneva. Here the US universities finally started to show their colours with both Princeton and NYU figuring in the top ten.
Top Trader is run by www.uuni.com, the community of the world's brightest students, and gnuTrade, the live online trading platform, and is open exclusively to university students from around the world. Competitors are given an initial budget of 10,000 'gnus', a virtual currency, which they trade live on the world's major financial markets, including the biggest stock indices, currencies, commodities and bonds. The simple, game-like trading screen and thorough hints and tips area means novice traders stand a real chance of amassing the most gnus at the end of each month and taking home the prize money. And no-one knows this better than the overall winner, Alex Zhang:
"This is the first trading platform I've used so I'm really excited to have won. I'm going to use my winnings to pay my school fees and travel, I think I might also use some of my money to trade on gnutrade again!"
Over the period of the competition student traders from around the world have shared winnings of £20,000 and when Top Trader returns for Autumn 2008 its expected to be even more hotly contested!
Here's what some of the other competitors have been saying about Top Trader:
"It was very exciting on the last day, it got to the point where getting into the top 5 was not easy, and it was better to remain in the top ten than risk being displaced completely." Chitral Patel, Cambridge University
"It was quite amazing trading on the final day. I had a short position on Oil, which I had taken anticipating a make it or break it day. Fortunately for me the call went the right way :)" Shubham Singal, IIM Kolkata.
"I checked my account 10 times on the final day to secure my position, extremely happy, and [it was] exciting after the results had been published. I phoned my parents and friends at midnight." Ke Xu, Imperial University, UK
To find out how you can get involved with uuni TopTrader competition contact Paul Travis: paul@cityandlaw.com