The closing ceremony of the IMI Finance Competition was held on Wednesday in the Innovation Complex Rotunda. Sponsored by Nvest, it featured roughly 100 guests, among whom were UTM’s principal Deep Saini and IMI director Hugh Gunz.
The Undergraduate Commerce Society Student Management Association and the Undergraduate Economics Council partnered with the Li Koon Chun Finance Learning Centre to host the ceremony.
Andrew Graham, the lab manager of FLC, was the MC for the evening. “This ceremony is a culminating event of a four-month period in which students were trading,” Graham said in an interview with The Medium. “The purpose of the event was to allow staff, faculty, and other students to hear about the strategies of some of the top 20 student traders.”
He explained that the competitors started with 100,000 USD, which they used in the markets “however they saw fit”.
“Participants were restricted to two things. They could only buy and sell company stocks, not derivatives, options, foreign exchange, or hedging,” Graham said.
Graham introduced the four judges, who included a UTM alumnus, a bond trader at CIBC, and a president of a private investment group.
The top five students were Mohammad Asad, Askri Abbas, Omar Ali Osman, Remon Tadros, and Leon Zhao. Each of them had to present their strategy and trading results in a five-minute presentation to the audience. Judges could ask them specific questions after they had shown their one-slide presentations.
“The five students chosen from the top 20 were selected because they had the best strategy and they represented the diversity of students,” said Graham.
The champion of the 2016 IMI Finance Competition was Abbas, who was awarded a cheque for $1,000 and a U of T trading jacket. Asad placed second with a cheque for $500 and Zhao won third place with a cheque for $250.
E. K. Huang won the Wolf of Bay Street award, which was given to the contestant with the highest return of investment at 55.7 percent. The Most Honest Trader award went to Raf Aman. Konrad Fitzpatrick won the Big Short award, which represents the greatest number of short-selling trades. Javid Karimli won the Bull award, which was given to the trader with the highest number of long-selling investments.
The Social Media award was awarded to Ryan Lam, who scored a 95/100 for engaging and influencing other students in the trading platform. Lam also won the award for the most overall trade.
