Dubai:
Recent American University in Dubai (AUD) graduate Rashid Khan dipped his toe in the financial trading pool, which proved to be quite a success for him. Along with his teammate Milad Abbasi, Khan won Dubai’s Professional Trading Group’s (DPTG) recent Inter-University Financial Trading Challenge. So why did the computer engineering graduate go the financial trading route?
“When I entered the competition, I thought it was going to help improve my knowledge of finance because I am going to pursue my MBA next year,” he said. “I ended up learning much more than that as the competition allowed us to test different skillsets, from risk management to patience.”
The AUD team was pitted against Dubai’s Hult Business School and Heriot-Watt University in Dubai teams in the final round and came out on top – despite Khan simultaneously holding down a full-time job.
“One of the constraints we faced in the final round was my working times, from 7am to 4pm,” he said. “At first I took two days leave from work and then was only available to attend and trade in the evenings.”
Busy hours
The competition consisted of each university team trading on the stock market, using simulation software, at first for two hours a day for eight days during the qualifying round. The three teams in the final round then had a five-day slog of trading in real market hours, 10am to midnight, and the team with the largest profits at the end won. “We first chose what time of the day would be the most optimum for us to trade at,” said Khan. “To identify that we downloaded historical market data from past weeks and analysed what time of the day had the highest market price fluctuations.”
In return the winners, Khan and Abbasi, were offered a fully paid scholarship on DPTG’s three-month intensive Trader Training Programme. “Our team was the only one out of the three teams that made profit by the end of the final round,” he said. “After the internship I was approached by DPTG to implement algorithms for testing automated trading strategies.”
Now an Airline Revenue Optimisation Superintendent for Emirates airline, Khan still dabbles in online trading —even if just for practice.
“I plan on opening a professional trading account once I’m comfortable my strategies work consistently.”
