We would like to congratulate the winners and participants of our second Python Coding Challenge organised by the Digital Skills Lab in partnership with LSE Careers, and sponsored by international market maker Optiver. The challenge took place in Lent term and focused on financial services, utilising a cutting-edge virtual exchange developed by Optiver. Students completed an online Python course before being sorted into teams to develop trading algorithms in Python, testing and then optimising the algorithm's performance to achieve the best possible trading outcome.
The challenge launched by Optiver on 15 February 2021 and was open to all LSE students who completed the pre-requisite Python training. Due to COVID the challenge took place online which proved difficult for some teams who were working across time zones. A total of 8 out of 13 teams submitted a presentation to compete for the for four team prizes and we are pleased to announce the winners as follows:
The Team Spirit award was given to those individual participants who went above and beyond – not only supporting their own teams but also providing support and assistance on several occasions to competitors who posted queries on the Support channel.
Our Team Spirit award winners are:
The Teamwork and collaboration award was presented to the team who demonstrated effective team working strategies, performing a skills audit to ensure they used their talents effectively, using a range of technologies to keep in touch, documenting their meetings to ensure team members were keep informed even when absent, and testing and refining their algorithms collaboratively in live online sessions to ensure all team members were involved in the development.
The winners of the Teamwork and collaboration award are Team Wallas:
- Theofanis Cheras
- Yingying Chen
- Tanmay Mahesh
- Michael Strahilov
The Best Trading Strategy award was presented to the team who were able to develop the most effective trading algorithm for the competition, while ensuring risk limits were not breached. The winning team demonstrated a systematic approach to their development, ensuring that risk was high on their list of priorities. They were also able to identify a specific weak spot in their trading and, expecting that other teams might experience the same weak spot, capitalise on that to improve their own performance. The winners of the Best Trading Strategy award are Team Lewis:
- Kevin Chee
- Michail Christodoulou
- Per Emil Jonsson
- Maria Daniel Loureiro
- Jathniel Wong
The Best Application of Python Learning award was given to the team who were able to demonstrate the greatest growth in their own learning – both through the provided materials and through their own initiative. The members of this team identified early on that they were starting from a very basic point and strategized about how best to increase their learning to impact on their performance – including how best to make use of the support provided by Robbert and programming best practice techniques they acquired to increase their effectiveness. They clearly articulated these strategies, what they had learned as a result and how they applied them to their final algorithm.
The winners of the Best Application of Python Learning are Team Beveridge:
- Kyungjun Kim
- Mausam Mehta
- Noor Sandhu
- Prisha Satwani
- Chenyi You
Finally, there is one team who performed well across all categories, demonstrating strong teamwork and collaboration, effective trading strategy, and team learning. This team also undertook a skills audit and effectively used their strengths while working collaboratively to develop their algorithm. They effectively used the existing support and learning from Optiver, in conjunction with other online materials to support their learning and key coding practices they had developed. Their presentation also outlined areas for ongoing development. And while their algorithm did not win the competition on the day, it was praised by the Optiver team for its stability and approach, noting that on another day it might have won the competition.
The overall winners are Team Hayek:
- Ximin Chen
- Maheep Ghuman
- Alex Pharaon
- Daniyar Suleimenov
- Dhiraj Tourani
The winners of the inaugural Python Coding Challenge can be found here.
The winners of the MT21 Python Coding Challenge can be found here.
If you have another idea for a coding challenge you would like us to help develop, please do get in touch by emailing us at digital.skills.lab@lse.ac.uk.