ACSpotlight | SUMMER 2016 | Student Achievements

Inter-University Algo Trading Contest 2016/17

YE Wenliang, Zeta

BBA4 (2014 Cohort)

The Best Presentation Awardees received the prize from Mr Bankee Kwan, the Chairman of CASH Algo Financial Group.	The Best Presentation Award The Inter-University Algo Trading Contest 2016/17 was jointly organized by ASTRI, the CASH Algo Finance Group, and the Hong Kong Science Park. My team won the Best Presentation Award at the event finale on February 19, 2017. The Contest gave us an opportunity to experience real-life trading, and provided the top performers with potential career opportunities or start-up support. Contest participants were required to demonstrate their programming skills and knowledge of financial derivatives such as options and futures. My team adopted a “UPT” strategy, which stands for unilateral pairs trading. Unlike conventional pairs trading that hedges risk by trading two sides, our unilateral strategy traded only one side.
Zeta (second from left) and his teammates.

The Best Presentation Awardees received the prize from Mr Bankee Kwan, the Chairman of CASH Algo Financial Group.

The Best Presentation Award

The Inter-University Algo Trading Contest 2016/17 was jointly organized by ASTRI, the CASH Algo Finance Group, and the Hong Kong Science Park. My team won the Best Presentation Award at the event finale on February 19, 2017.

The Contest gave us an opportunity to experience real-life trading, and provided the top performers with potential career opportunities or start-up support. Contest participants were required to demonstrate their programming skills and knowledge of financial derivatives such as options and futures. My team adopted a “UPT” strategy, which stands for unilateral pairs trading. Unlike conventional pairs trading that hedges risk by trading two sides, our unilateral strategy traded only one side.

Zeta (second from left) and his teammates.

In the Contest, I needed to team up with different CityU majors, namely from finance, information engineering, and computer engineering. While overcoming the challenges posed by the Contest, I learned a lot about trading strategies from participants from other universities. At the same time, I also realized the importance of algorithms in the future financial market.

As a former Contest participant, I would advise my fellow majors to participate in similar contests and read more books about financial derivatives. It would also be extremely helpful to know programming and modeling.

Finally, I would like to thank Mr. David Yip in the Department of Accountancy for inspiring me to attend the Contest. I contacted Mr. Yip many times, and I have learned a lot from him. Mr. Yip has been an outstanding tutor and I truly appreciated his support.