OSU tops in real-world finance competition

Jim Mitchell
Communication Services
Oklahoma State University
(405) 744-6260
04/19/05

OSU’s Michael Benien (foreground) took top individual honors at the recent open-outcry trading floor competition. The OSU team also far outdistanced three other universities to take top honors in team competition that involved conducting daily trades for over a month.

Oklahoma State University has earned top team and individual honors in the New York Mercantile Exchange/CO-ED Magazine Commodities Challenge. The competition is designed to give students a real business world experience by conducting daily trades as a team and by participating as individuals on a trading floor.

OSU’s team, advised by Tim Krehbiel, finance professor in the Spears School of Business, left the other competitors far behind with a cumulative profit of  $46,950 realized from trading a crude oil futures contract over the contest period March 1^st through April 8^th. 

Each team was given a $100,000 mock account to start trading. Krehbiel, who limited himself to the role of advisor during the competition, is applauding the efforts of OSU’s team, which included Arun Aravind, Michael Benien, Ken DeBell, Gena Duvall, Craig Harryman, Abhishek Hirpara, Russell Knox, Sang Jin Lee, Ramnik Sachar, Michael Wolfe and Jeremy Wright.  OSU was the only university in the competition to earn a profit. The first place finish earned the trading team a $1200 cash prize.

“I’m very proud of the way they devised and implemented their trading strategies and managed the necessary record keeping,” says Krehbiel. “The organizational aspects led to many good teaching opportunities for me,” he adds.

OSU’s Michael Benien won the second or individual phase, known as open-outcry trading floor competition. Arun Aravind was also among the finalists in this phase of the contest held at the University of Houston April 16. Benien was awarded a $1,000 prize and an internship at the New York Mercantile Exchange for his efforts. Other team members included Gena Duvall, Abhishek Hirpara and classmate Anuj Gupta. The contestants used the techniques of futures market floor traders to complete orders through the open-outcry system.

 For information about this page, send e-mail to Jim Mitchell.