'08 Deutsche MSCF Trading Competition

For the fourth year, Deutsche Bank has underwritten the Deutsche Bank MSCF Trading Competition, run by the co-founder of the FAS Trading Software at the Tepper School of Business, Professor John O'Brien.

Out of eighty-five traders, Ning Jiang was named Top Trader winning a $1,000 prize. Andy Kirou, an extremely close second, and Palash Kasodhan, third, won $500 and $250 respectively. The top two traders attained not only an outstanding risk adjusted rank but also earned over the trading period a 45% return during which time the benchmark "buy and hold" lost 10.4%! Rounding out the Top Ten were Borzu Masoudi, Jeffrey Tay, David Kim, Feng Zou, Philip Hong, Yushan Zhou and Wengang Ji.
 
Conducted over arguably the toughest trading period in US market history, the competition was designed around the US equity and equity futures markets. Trading both ETF's and equity futures during the practice period, in the actual competition students were locked into a non-tradable position of ETF's (the SPY and the QQQQ) with the task of using futures (the CME’s December 2008 and March 2009 e-minis on the S&P500 and the Nasdaq 100 and the less liquid ETF futures on the SPY and QQQQ) to manage the position. Real-time prices were used; positions were marked-to-market twice daily and evaluated on a risk return basis. Winners were determined by their performance in managing both risk and return.
 
Deutsche Bank honored this year's winners at a special Wall Street reception in New York City on Jan. 5, 2009.