Bloomberg Global Trading Challenge Proves to be a Valuable Learning Experience
Starting as a one-team pilot last year, the Bloomberg Global Trading Challenge has exploded in popularity in the School of Business. Under the tutelage of Paul Scanlon, seven teams from the Providence College of Business competed in this year’s Trading Challenge.
Seeded with a hypothetical $1 million, teams aimed to have the highest time weighted relative return, relative to the Bloomberg World Large, Mid & Small Cap Price Return Index. Bloomberg deemed this year’s six-week competition to be the largest competition to date.
Of the over 2,000 teams from 309 colleges and universities representing 38 countries across the globe, Providence College teams stood out in the crowd. This year the PCSB put forward seven teams each with unique strategies.
The team comprised of Luke Buckley ’25, Deniro DeMarco ’25, and Duncan Ramler ’25, collectively known as Over the Hedge Fund took the top spot of the Providence College entries and finished 427th putting them among the top 25 percent of global participants. The group had an impressive P&L of $46,500 compared to the benchmark’s $31,000. The team started off slower than they liked, placing 860th after the first week but made some aggressive trades that quickly brought them to the top of the competition.
Ramler, the team’s captain shared “It felt great to be the top team, but we aimed to be among the top teams in the world. Overall, it was a rewarding experience and I hope more PC students participate in the future!” These experiential learning opportunities prove to be invaluable to PCSB student growth and will further ensure that students land their dream jobs and internships. Ramler reflected on his team’s learning takeaways, “Lean into working with a team; we really valued the diversity of ideas, even when we didn’t agree. We learned to trust our gut and trust our team members and it resulted in some strong trades, even when we almost second-guessed ourselves.”
PC’s runner-up team, Eaton Street Maulers finished with an absolute P&L of $42,000 followed closely by Friars Unleashed, who made a huge finishing push jumping from 1112th, at the start of the final week, to 782nd.
Not every team reached their end goals but each team found the challenge to be a fun and useful learning experience. Chris Suarez ‘26 from Friars in Finance, whose team had a strong start (368th in early rounds) and finished with a negative relative return reflected on the experience.
“Until this experience, I never had the chance to see how influence has a real impact on the market – from financials to earnings and even global events – it was fun to dig deep on individual stocks and make pitches. My team and I had a group chat and we’d pitch stocks all day to each other.” On their strategy, Suarez shared, “We really focused on earnings and made some great trades, but also missed the mark on some, but it was enriching to go through the process of developing a trading strategy.” On what was the biggest learning curve “getting used to how Bloomberg works and its timing; it was my first time really using Bloomberg outside of Bloomberg Market Concepts. Overall, I found myself becoming more aware of all of the influences that impact individual stocks, especially global events, both small and large.”
The breadth of experiential learning opportunities has grown tremendously in recent years. Competitions like the Global Trading Challenge allow many students in the Providence College School of Business to get direct experience with tools like Bloomberg that they’ll be using in their professional roles. This learning experience allowed 27 PCSB students to hone their Bloomberg terminal skills – the PCSB has 12 terminals in the Ryan Center – while competing in a trading challenge with peers from across the globe.
Paul Scanlon, who spearheaded the challenge shared, “At the PCSB we’ve developed a variety of experiential learning opportunities that allow students to explore markets and broaden their skill sets through hands-on experiences that develop their trading and investing mindsets. We’ve delineated the difference between trading and investing. This challenge is a great environment to develop trading skills while other opportunities like the CFA research challenge and the Student Led Asset Management club, among others, enhance their longer-range understanding of investing.”
