2018 marked a year of many firsts, including the inaugural CBXmarket University Challenge. Like other investment competitions aimed at college students, CBXmarket’s investment challenge offered teams a chance to learn about investing by making “paper” trades in live securities. Differentiating itself from typical investment competitions, the challenge provided an opportunity to invest in corporate bonds rather than stocks.
Although in its infancy, participation in the CBXmarket University Challenge was robust with roughly 30 teams, comprised of over 100 students from colleges across the country. Each team was allocated capital at the onset, and in order to mirror real-world investing, periodically received additional contributions that needed to be invested to avoid a drag on returns. To further enhance the experience, CBXmarket provided the students access to its cutting-edge portfolio management software.
The students deployed capital across a variety of strategies, in a broad range of fixed income securities from investment grade bonds, to floating rate notes, equity-linked securities, and distressed debt. “We were impressed with the ingenuity displayed by a number of teams in sourcing unique securities and experimenting with complex investment strategies” said Erik Zoega, CEO of CBXmarket.
While the bond market is $11 trillion dollars larger than the equity market, investing in the latter is much more widely taught across college campuses. As such, CBXmarket hoped this exercise would help generate interest around bond investing and supplement the often-limited fixed income coursework offered by universities. This provided a unique opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience evaluating and investing in bonds.
In response to the announcement, Mark Schild, Assistant Dean of the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall commented, “Congratulations to Leo Cheung and the Seton Hall Pirates! The CBXmarket University Challenge was a wonderful way to connect academic concepts with practical real-world experience and offered our students an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the latest and greatest in financial technology.”
Encouraged by the positive feedback they received on their first University Challenge, CBXmarket intends to host the competition annually and hopes that even more schools and students will have the opportunity to participate in 2019.
About CBXmarket
CBXmarket creates innovative financial technology solutions for fixed income investors. The cloud-based OASIS platform is a fixed income portfolio management solution that enables investment managers to realize the benefits of workflow automation and portfolio optimization to streamline front, middle, and back-office functions.
The CBXmarket team combines industry expertise with the brightest minds in software engineering to provide cutting-edge technology that transforms portfolio optimization, risk management, and idea generation processes.
