Trading – Trinity SMF

What is trading?

Broadly speaking, trading is the buying and selling of securities on financial exchanges. There are many different types of securities, the most common ones including: foreign exchange (FX or Forex), equities (or shares), indices (such as the Dow Jones), commodities (such as gold and oil), fixed income products (bonds) and derivative products (this includes options and futures).

Trading these products on the financial exchanges centres around price movements in the underlying securities. Market participants include institutional investors, retail investors, banks, brokers and market-makers. Active traders, or speculators, will try to predict price movements. Market-makers, or liquidity providers will show prices at which they are willing to buy and sell the given securities, with the aim of capturing the difference between them, known as a bid-ask spread.

What is our trading division?

The Trading Division of the Trinity SMF was established to broaden the opportunities available to members within the fund. Previous SMF alumni have gone on to pursue careers in trading, encouraged by the opportunities made available to them through the SMF. We wanted to bring these opportunities together and formalise the trading insight activities of the SMF so that as many members as possible can discover if a career in trading is something for them.

In order to represent the wealth of opportunities in the sector we have now launched 2 subdivisions: Investment Bank (IB) Trading and Quant Trading. IB Trading teaches students about the role of a market maker, how they use market knowledge and client relationships to capture bid-ask spreads for the bank. This is the role traders in investment banks play. Quant Trading focuses on a market taker role typically seen in trading houses and hedge funds. This subdivision aims to teach students how quant/proprietary traders leverage statistics, probability and market dynamics to profit from trades for themselves.

Purpose of the Trading Division

Education

Meetings of the Trading Division are held weekly, during which members are given an insight into the various roles available within Trading.

Awareness

In line with our overall aim, the Trading Division of the SMF will focus on educating members on market basics throughout the year in weekly meetings.

Experience

The division will be running market-making mini-games and simulated trading competitions to give members an opportunity to apply what they have learned.

The Rotman International Trading Competition

Each year, the Trinity SMF competitively selects six students to represent the university at the Rotman International Trading Competition in Toronto. This highly prestigious competition provides students with an opportunity to make real-time trading decisions, manage risk and interact with other market participants.

Competitors compete in a variety of technical cases across different asset classes, including options trading, commodities trading and an open outcry case. The competition gives competitors the confidence to compete on a world stage against fellow students from around the globe. It is an unrivalled insight into the role of a trader on the financial exchanges.

Our 2020 team finished 23rd overall, and placed 13th in the Commodities Case.