ASTRI, CASH Algo Finance Group, and Hong Kong Science Park jointly organised the ‘Inter-University Algo Trading Contest’ seeking to identify and nurture young talents who can shine in algorithm-based trading a.k.a. algo trading. The contest served as a platform for participants to experience real life trading, and provided top performers with potential career opportunities or start-up support. At the event finale on 19 February 2017, Dr Frank Tong, Chief Executive Officer of ASTRI was one of the officiating guests and presented awards to the winners.

Algo trading allows users to unleash the power or their computers – to evaluate the stock market as per pre-designed rules, and automatically issue trading orders, all done with the help of digital intelligence. Statistics show that over 60% of the US stock market transactions are made by algo trading. Algo trading is becoming a popular trend in the age of Financial Technologies (FinTech). Developing algo trading platform and technologies will help Hong Kong in its endeavour to become a global FinTech hub. ASTRI actively pursues R&D on algo trading platforms and collaborates with financial institutions to promote related applications and solutions.

Over 100 teams from 13 renowned universities in Hong Kong and the Mainland participated in the contest. Professor KC Chan, GBS, JP, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of the SAR Government; Mr Bankee P Kwan, JP, Chairman of the Organising Committee; Dr Frank Tong, CEO of ASTRI; Mr Albert Wong, Chief Executive Officer of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation; Professor Tony F Chan, President of HKUST; and Professor Wong Yuk-Shan, President of the Open University of Hong Kong officiated the contest finale and presented awards to the winners. The overall champion’s Gold Award went to team ‘WeQuant’ from Tsinghua University while the Silver and Bronze Awards were won by teams ‘For Dream’ from Fudan University and ‘Alpha Quant’ from Hong Kong University respectively. The finale was a hard-contested, exciting event where future leaders of the industry had a taste of an advanced, digital future.