Spears School students earn 12th place in international trading competition

A team of four finance students from Oklahoma State University placed 12th in the 2009 Rotman International Trading Competition in Toronto, Canada. The annual competition ran from February 19 through 21.

The three-day event is designed to present current real-world marketing problems to college students to simulate obstacles they will face in the workforce after graduation.

“The contest consists of four trading sub-competitions; three electronic trading and one outcry competition,” said Ali Nejadmalayeri, assistant professor in the OSU Department of Finance. “Overall, we are ranked 12th out of 36 schools - a list that includes an elite group of schools like Harvard, MIT, Penn State, University of Toronto, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Northwestern, University of Western Ontario, Drexel and West Point Academy.”

In addition to the overall placing, the team was ranked fifth in the credit risk competition. In this event, teams simulate the trading of corporate bonds as would be performed on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange.

Team members Erin Abercrombie, Brian Ehlis, Allissa Lee and Kyle Mendenhall are all students within the Master of Science in Quantitative Financial Economics (MSQFE) program in the finance department at OSU.

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Rao earns honors and awards

Ramesh Rao, professor and Paul C. Wise Chair in finance, received the best paper award in corporate finance at the 2009 Southwestern Finance Association conference in Oklahoma City on February 27. His was paper was titled "Equity Market Timing, Investment Opportunity and Shareholder Benefit" and was co-authored by Frank D’ Souza, a 2008 OSU finance doctoral degree recipient who is currently on the faculty at Loyola College in Maryland. In addition, Rao was a panelist in the “Session with Journal Editors” at the conference. Rao represented the Journal of Applied Finance, which he co-edits with Betty Simkins, associate professor of finanace, and Charles Smithson of Rutter & Associates.

Rao also recently wrote co-wrote another paper that was accepted for publication in Financial Management. The paper is titled “Do Tax Law Changes Influence Ex-Dividend Stock Price Behavior? Evidence from 1926-2005.” Rao's co-author was Jeff Whitworth, an OSU finance doctoral degree recipient who d is a faculty member at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Sharda helps develop new computer model that could help solve email overload

A computer model called SIMONE, for Simulator for Interruptions and Message Overload in Network Environments described in the latest issue of the International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling, could help solve email overload in busy organizations and companies.

Ashish Gupta at Minnesota State University Moorhead, and Ramesh Sharda at Oklahoma State University, describe how SIMONE can produce a model of how email flows within a network of knowledge workers. Gupta explains that the simulation can be used to devise coping mechanisms for controlling information overload and interruptions associated with emails, two common problems faced by managers of knowledge workers.

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