By Meghan McVeigh, News Staff
Stocks go up, stocks go down. But a new student organization for aspiring financiers is here to stay.
Josh Miller-Frankel, a sophomore finance and insurance major who formed the NEU Traders club in March, said he hopes to expand its membership to both undergraduate and graduate students and break onto the student activities scene.
He would particularly like to involve students who work on the 360 Huntington Fund, the section of Northeastern’s endowment managed by graduate business students.
“They would be able to share more insight and offer more guidance in regards to the more complex topics that are involved with being a successful trader,” Miller-Frankel said.
By bringing together graduate and undergraduate club members, the group will be able collaborate and analyze different perspectives about world markets as well with provide a plethora of networking connections for its members. The club will also implement members’ trading knowledge by sending a competition team to local and national trading simulation competitions.
Miller-Frankel said he hopes to get students in other majors involved to expand the strengths of the club and competition team regarding such needs as the creation of trade algorithms.
Miller-Frankel and club members, currently only four students, also hope to take their interest and knowledge of world markets to the next level and compete in simulation competitions.
Club members have high hopes to participate in next year’s eighth annual Rotman Interactive Trading Competition (RITC), held every February at the University of Toronto. Participating teams come from colleges and universities worldwide to compete in the simulation of different world market trading aspects. Last year a total of 44 teams participated.
“We would get the chance to go up against teams from Harvard, MIT and Babson; all Boston area schools Northeastern students aren’t provided with many opportunities to compete against,” Miller-Frankel said.
The competition uses cases that range from commodities to trading algorithms in order to test the participants’ understanding of both the world market and trading software.
“The software used during the competition would be the same software used by members of the club,” Miller-Frankel said.
This allows for plenty of preparation and training before the competition early next year, he said.
“I think there is more than enough talent at Northeastern for the team to be successful at the RITC.” Miller-Frankel said.
Although the club will not begin formally meeting until the fall semester, Miller-Frankel said he encourages anyone interested to contact him at [email protected].
