In this contest competitors write a fully autonomous trading agent that trades stocks, bonds, options, and futures. The algorithm must run for 8 weeks, and meet minimum criteria as well as finish with a profit.
From Ron Allison - "Last year I entered the contest and didn't quite have the skills to implement the required algorithm. However this year I wrote an object oriented, multi-threaded trading agent that totally makes it's own decisions. Writing an autonomous 'trade-bot' is a large programming effort, so my goal was simply to successfully implement a conservative trading algorithm."
From Brian Armstrong - "I've always been excited about solving real
world problems through software. Participating in the IB Olympiad
allowed me to try out my own mathematical ideas on the markets while
testing my programming skills on a complicated problem. It was
absolutely a worth while experience to interface with the same API
and real-world infrastructure used by many 'quant funds' and veteran
traders."
Both students recently won $1000 cash in the Interactive Brokers Trading Olympiad. It is an individual contest with no team entries allowed, so both were individual efforts. However the contest pays cash awards for 1st through 100th place.
Previously UT graduate student Patrick Christmas won $50,000 for 1st place in the contest, however we have not heard of any UT undergraduates placing in the contest. Having two undergraduate winners proves that even though it is a large programming problem, it is well within the capabilities of many UT undergrads.
Link to contest results: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/education/IBTradingOlympiad.php
