A team of traders from Clark University’s Graduate School of Management (GSOM) finished fourth in the 2011 CME Group Commodity Trading Challenge. Teams from 166 schools around the world, including two from GSOM, traded crude oil and gold futures contracts during a two-week, around-the-clock competition.

The team, led by captain Bjoern Weidlich (MBA ’11), finished 11th in the initial trading period, turning $100,000 into $174,750 in two weeks of trading. Other team members were Chauncey Song, Cindy Tang, Rebecca Zhang, and Albert Shi, all MSF ‘12.

The CME Group Commodity Trading Challenge pits colleges and universities from across the country in a fast- paced electronic and “open outcry” trading competition. This competition was originally created by The New York Mercantile Exchange and the University of Houston ten years ago with just a small number of schools on the roster. As the markets have grown, so has the competition, with 58 schools participating in 2010. In addition to the electronic trading segment, various campus student organizations hosted open outcry contests, in which traders on a stock exchange or futures exchange communicate by shouting and using hand signals to transfer information primarily about buy and sell orders.

All members of every championship round team received scholarship money provided by the sponsors of the event. For the national finals, which ended March 18, the Clark team traded an initial amount of $250,000 against teams from Rice University, New York University, Arizona State University and Ohio State University, among others. Rice University was the winner of the challenge.

CME Group Inc. owns and operates large derivatives and futures exchanges in Chicago and New York City, as well as online trading platforms. It also owns the Dow Jones stock and financial indexes. The contracts its exchanges trade include futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, rare and precious metals, weather and real estate.