The Commerce Times

Rotman International Case Competition gives Ryerson students a dose of reality

With two weeks of training, Dr.Yuanshun Li, an assistant professor of finance at Ryerson University, prepared a team of four students to participate in an annual Rotman International Case Competition held at the University of Toronto from Feb. 18 to 20. It was Li’s first time leading such an event, and the success was a large improvement from last year’s competition, where Ryerson placed last. Li has also proved once again that Ryerson students have a great market potential.

The competition, which was originally designed for MBA students, included more than 40 universities from around the globe, mostly from the United States and Canada. But students from from Hong Kong, Australia and Thailand were also among the participants.

The Ryerson team consisted of four members: Chandan Sharma, Bojan Kostela, Majed Masad, and Greg Krisa. Although the Ryerson team didn’t make it to the finals, Ryerson did place first in the Quantative Outcry portion of the competition. The final score and ranking of each competing team was tabulated after everyone had completed their attempts in all five of the competitions, and the team with the most points was declared the winner.

“Definitely team work and anticipating where the market was going helped us beat everyone else,” said Masad.

Overall, the team was happy with what they accomplished at the competition, but there was one challenge that may have hindered their success.

“Lack of experience in doing models together, it was always hard getting everyone together [for preparation purposes] and other than that, everybody has their own point of view and it’s hard to find the right solution. You have to have nerves of steel, and a connection between members,” said Masad.

The structure of the competition included two days of actual challenges and one day of networking and socializing.

“Thursday night there was a lot of socializing, and also it was a trading pit: bid-ask, bid-ask!” said Kostela.

The trading pit is an area where future exchange professionals compete for stocks; it involves shouting and gesturing as the main means of communication.

“It really woke everyone up, everyone was kind of tired. The wholetrading pit was not part of the competition, it was an ice-breaker,” said Masad.

That day consisted of sales, trading and credit risk analysis, downgrading, and market information. The actual competition began on

Friday Feb. 19, it continued until Saturday. The Ryerson team described their experience as one of the most distinctive moments of their lives.

“Upstairs the analysts were working on a model, reading news, which the traders did not have access to, so when new news would come out, the analysts would input data into an excel model and after give traders either a buy or sell,” added Bojan.

Apart from their newly-gained trading experience, team members had a chance to network and show their skills to participating sponsors. In the end the Ryerson team came up with the unanimous conclusions about their experience.

“Real-life trading is different than what we learn in books and luck is a highly valuable asset in trading.”