Carnegie Mellon University participated in Market Making Game on March 23, which was hosted by the Quant Club and sponsored by Optiver.

Apr 08, 2024

Market Making Game Gives Students Experience, Connections

By Kirsten Heuring Email Kirsten Heuring

Heidi Opdyke

Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
Phone 412-268-9982

Students from across Carnegie Mellon University emulated Wall Street traders during the Quant Club's annual Market Making Game, sponsored by Optiver.

Participants solved math problems to try to determine the value of different contracts, then they traded with each other and with traders from Optiver, a proprietary trading firm and options market maker. Students were given tips from Optiver traders throughout the event, and teams were judged on their ability to estimate the value of contracts and their trading skills. Winning teams received Optiver gear and dinner with the Optiver traders.

Both undergraduate students and students from the Master of Science in Computational Finance participated in the competition. Tze Hng Loke, a junior in computer science and the president of the Quant Club, said that Market Making Game serves as an introductory event to learn more about the field of quantitative trading.

"The event aims to test a participant's mathematical intuition as well as ability to make decisions rapidly within an extremely short period of time, skills which are quintessential for a successful quantitative trader," Loke said. "Through this event, the Quant Club hopes to develop interest in quantitative trading among the student population, and most importantly, we hope that students can have fun while trying to come up with creative strategies to trade against other teams."

Students rush to make trades at the start of a trading round. Market Making Game consisted of four parts, with each part having an estimation round and a trading round.

Madison Zhao, a sophomore in mathematical sciences with the team Forbes Ave. Trading, proposes a trade with members of the team No. 1 NJ Quants, MSCF students Liudi Song, Zhijun Cao and Shuyun Wang.

Members of the team Super Invincible T-Rex Warriors, including Jerry Yin, a first-year majoring in business administration, and Figo Wang, a first-year student in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, negotiate a trade with Zhou He, a student in MSCF.

Nearly 140 students participated in the Market Making Game on March 23.

Thirty students from MSCF participated in Market Making Game.

BONOBOS, comprised of computer science sophomores Nick Ma, Andy Zhu, Daniel Jiang, Charles Ding, David Wang and Kevin He, won first place in trading.

Xinwei, including MSCF students Ke Zha, Naitik Lapsiya, Somesh Bajpai, Zhou He, Xinwei Long and Anubhav Deep won second place in trading.

Team Gtowizard nitzone, won second place in estimation. The team was comprised of mathematical sciences sophomore Ishin Shah, mathematical sciences senior Eric Zheng, mathematical sciences first-year Allen Yang, computer science sophomore Krish Matta, interdisciplinary computer science sophomore Shiva Oswal and mathematical sciences senior Sam Rosenstrauch.

Wolves of Forbes St, consisting of computational science sophomore Iven Bai, statistics and machine learning junior Ryan Zhang, computational finance sophomore Leo Xu, business administration and statistics and data science senior Vihan Karnala and computational finance sophomore Jason Shi won third place in estimation. Team member Darren Grendi, a computational finance sophomore, is not pictured.