ROBOTRADER competition: Educating engineering students in financial markets

This paper describes the design and progress of the annual Robotrader competition that is organized at Telecommunication Engineering School of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ÜPM) for university students all across Spain. The aim of the competition is to program real time algorithmic trading systems; but along the way students, that usually have a technical engineering profile, explore the financial markets and get to know the firms and products from the financial sector. The initiative involves a mixture of education styles, each aimed at achieving specific goals. First, there are lectures given by professors and professionals from both the financial and computer science sectors. The lectures are followed by a competition in which students can put into practice what they have learnt in the lectures. The initiative provides a forum for the students that serves as a tool for e-learning during the market formation period as well as a way to follow the results of the competition.