Bond University PhD student, Bjoern Krollner, recently won the ASX sharemarket game. The game is organised by the Australian Securities Exchange and the challenge is to increase the value of a hypothetical portfolio of shares over a period of approximately three months. Over 10,000 people participated in the game.
Bjoern managed to increase the initial capital of $50,000 by over 23% into a final portfolio value of $61,864. By comparison, the All Ordinaries stock index lost 4.70% in value over the same period of time. According the ASX website, only 20% of players finished the game in profit and the average player portfolio value was $48,153.
Bjoern is currently in the final stages of his PhD in the area of Computational Finance. His research focus is on the prediction of stock market downturns and the development of risk management strategies using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs).
His particular interest lies in the automation of trading strategies and he has a background in programming in Java, C# and Matlab. After finishing his PhD, Bjoern would like to work as a quantitative software developer for an investment bank or hedge fund.
Bjoern did not have a finance background when he joined Bond University. He learned the basic skills of developing and testing trading strategies in the Computational Finance subject offered by the School of Information Technology.
“I highly recommend the Computational Finance course to anybody interested in the area of trading and investing,” said Bjoern Krollner.
“The course begins with the fundamentals of developing trading strategies so that no special background in finance or information technology is required. The course was fun and teaches you a great skill for life even if you do not choose to become a computational finance professional.”
Bond University head of the Computational Finance research group Dr Bruce Vanstone congratulated Bjoern for his outstanding performance in the competition. Dr Vanstone encourages his students to actively monitor the stock market.
“Competitions like the ASX stock market game provide a wonderful opportunity for students to learn about the stock market without risking any money,” said Dr Vanstone.
The next Computational Finance course at Bond University will be offered in September.