IMC Announces Team of Australian Students as Winner of 'Prosperity' Global Trading Competition

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Apr 13, 2023, 09:17 ET

Top traders in North America, Europe also recognized

CHICAGO, April 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- IMC, a leading global market maker that provides liquidity to financial assets on trading venues, is pleased to announce a team of four university students from Australia as the winner of its 10-day global trading competition 'Prosperity.' The winning team, trading as StartupVacuumBubble, includes Australian National University students Dhruv Hariharan, Jeff Li and Kevin Zhou as well as one student from University of Melbourne.

The team leveraged basic Python skills, strategic insights and analysis to successfully out-trade more than 10,000 student participants to earn the $25,000 prize. IMC will also donate $25,000 in their names to The Ocean Cleanup.

Team StartupVacuumBubble said in a statement about their win, "Prosperity was a really fun competition to be a part of. It was fast paced, with new data and stocks coming out every day. The fact that each stock was distinct from the others also forced us to come up with new strategies, which kept us on our feet. Most of our team members had previously done trading challenges and are quite good at coding, and we were all excited to learn more about careers in trading and quantitative research."

The 10-day market simulation competition was fiercely contested from the start, with the leaderboard constantly changing throughout each of the five rounds. Other top performers include:

North American Region: A team of three Stanford University students, trading as team Stanford Cardinal, includes Konstantin Miagkov, Shubham Anand Jain and Parth Dodhia, finished second overall. They placed first in North America, among 4,400+ participants in the region.
European Region: Out-trading more than 5,000 players across Europe, was a team of two students, Shubham Rathi and Leonardo Knol trading as team algo_holics, from Erasmus University Rotterdam. They finished fourth overall.
First Female Finisher: Michelle Li, who was on a team of five Carnegie Mellon University students, was the first female to finish the challenge. The team, known as Unger, finished third overall and also included David Luo, Shibo Zhou, Fenglin Wang and Richard Zhan. About 15% of all Prosperity participants were female.
First Individual Female Finisher: University of Toronto student Lisa Yu was the top individual female participant to finish the challenge, coming in 18^th place overall.

"Prosperity was developed through a collaborative effort, involving a multi-disciplined team consisting of traders, technologists and marketing experts," said Timothy Hall, Head of Group Operations at IMC. "It was designed to give participants a fun insight into the world of algorithmic trading. We are immensely proud of the engagement and caliber we saw from all participants."

Prosperity took more than a year to develop and was created to celebrate STEM careers and grow IMC's recruiting pool in a highly competitive labor market.

"Finding and engaging with top talent is key to the success of IMC and the Prosperity trading challenge has allowed us to connect with some of the best up-and-coming talent in the world," said Robert Rodenburg, Global Head of HR at IMC. "Our hope is that they now will also be encouraged to consider an exciting career in algorithmic trading."

Prosperity 2 is already being planned and IMC is looking forward to hosting an even more fun and exciting competition next year.

In continuation of IMC's long history of giving back, $25,000 will also be donated in the winners' names to The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. The Ocean Cleanup works by stemming the inflow of plastic via rivers and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean.

About IMC   
IMC is a leading global market maker with more than three decades' experience and offices in Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific. IMC employs more than 1400 talented individuals across offices in Amsterdam, Chicago, Sydney, Hong Kong, Seoul, New York, Zug and Mumbai. Their core business is to provide liquidity in financial assets on trading venues, and to deliver the best outcome in value and risk to investors. IMC employs state-of-the-art algorithms, statistical techniques, and innovative low latency technologies to execute their strategies. IMC engages in trading activities on its own account and closely complies with regulatory requirements set by (supra-)national authorities.

* Visit IMC - Prosperity for more information.

SOURCE IMC