Bloomberg was founded in 1981 by many global leaders like Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, and has since been at the forefront of financial technology and economic influence on a global level. Every year, Bloomberg hosts the Global Trading Challenge, a competition that requires university teams to invest virtual money into Bloomberg’s Terminal system. At the end of the competition period, the team with the best-performing investments wins. Out of the 1000 teams competing, the team from Stevens accomplished the feat of placing 20th in North America and 50th worldwide.
Stevens’ team for this year’s competition, self-dubbed “Slavic Inc.” to pay homage to the members’ ethnic identities, consisted of Dmitiry Stepanyan ’24, Damian Lech ’24, Adam Moszczynski ’25. Stepanyan and Lech attended high school together and are neighbors with Moszczynski in Hoboken. As members of the Stevens Student Managed Investment Fund (SSMIF), the team has experience with investments, the technology of the financial world, and the skills needed to succeed in a fast-paced, competitive investment environment.
The competition took place over four weeks. Working in the state-of-the-art Hanlon Financial Systems Center at Stevens, Slavic Inc. used Bloomberg Terminal to make and monitor investments and saw their ranking on Bloomberg’s weekly updates trend upwards. Within the competition, the team had limits on time and the investment types they were allowed to make. The team could only take long positions in stocks, which mirror the levels of Wall Street stocks. During the competition, there was a downturn in the market, making the challenge even greater. Slavic Inc. used macroeconomic data to predict trends and make their investments in the best way possible. It was a system that paid off, as the team beat the market and surpassed control data by 5%.
One way the team achieved such success in the competition was the compartmentalization of their team. While others worked together on each investment, Slavic Inc. let each member make their own decisions, simulating three firms operating under the same name. Each team member used a unique combination of skills taught in their classes. Moszczynski said, “My strategy came from SMIF and from everything I learned in the last year […] I just threw it all together.”
Slavic Inc.’s advisor was Dr. Donald Lombardi, a teaching professor at the School of Business. Lombardi offered support and encouragement throughout the competition period, but the work was done primarily by the students. Lombardi praised the team: “Whether it is in classroom discourse or while changing trains through Secaucus Junction, these three gentlemen have an unrelenting thirst for knowledge and an integrity that serves them well in all they do at Castle Point, including this competition […] Those qualities, along with their financial acumen, will be unquestionable assets in their careers.”
Be First to Comment