Deadline: January 25, 2016 | Apply here
[Oops, the opportunity has already expired. Sign up to AlphaGamma weekly newsletters to stay ahead of the game]

CME Group’s Trading Challenge is a complimentary four-week electronic trading competition where teams of undergraduate and graduate students can trade a variety of CME Group products from multiple asset classes in a simulated trading environment on a real-time professional trading platform provided by CQG.

This electronic trading team competition is designed to provide student teams with an educational experience consistent with that of professional trading of CME Group products.  Teams trade using live data in a simulated environment. Students compete as school teams for the competition. Registered teams comprised of 3 to 5 currently enrolled students will compete for cash prizes and unique CME Group experiences.

Teams will use the CQG Integrated Client (IC) trading platform to execute trades on the CME Globex platform. CQG will provide access to technical analysis and trading software as well as training before the competition begins. The CQG help line is available 24 hours a day. This annual competition has grown each year – with 226 schools from 37 countries and over 500 teams competing in 2015. The Trading Challenge is a unique chance for students to learn hands-on techniques for trading futures. Teams can participate on a student-led team or in cooperation with a faculty advisor.

CQG, Inc. provides high-performance trade routing, global market data, and advanced technical analysis. CQG partners with more than eighty Futures Commission Merchants and provides Direct Market Access to more than forty exchanges through its global network of co-located Hosted Exchange Gateways. CQG’s server-side order management tools for spreading, market aggregation, and smart orders are unsurpassed for speed and ease-of-use. CQG’s market data feed consolidates more than seventy-five sources, including exchanges worldwide for futures, options, fixed income, foreign exchange, and equities as well as data on debt securities, industry reports, and financial indices. CQG has received the Best Technical Analysis Platform award from The Technical Analyst. CQG is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with sales and support offices worldwide.

Competition Eligibility

• 3 graduate and 3 undergraduate teams are eligible to compete per school. Teams may not mix graduate and undergraduate members. Creating a team of students from different schools is not permitted.
• Each team is required to have 3 to 5 students from the same undergraduate or graduate school. Recent graduates are not eligible to participate.
• Every student involved must be enrolled in an accredited college or university at the undergraduate or graduate level. All participants must be enrolled for the duration of the competition at the university identified by the team lead in the registration form.
• Faculty Advisors are highly recommended to oversee each school’s participation. Advisors will have early registration access to register their teams.
• There is no fee to register and training on the CQG platform will be provided prior to the competition.
• A student who was part of a winning team in the previous year’s competition is not eligible to win cash prizes during the current year’s competition. If a team partially consists of members who were part of a previous year’s winning team, that team is still eligible to win, but the ineligible member(s) will forfeit their portion of any cash prize.

For general challenge inquires and questions related to registration, or to be included in our email distributions, contact:  trading.challenge@cmegroup.com

For more business and career opportunities, check our opportunities section and subscribe to our weekly newsletters.