The prestigious Algotrade Hackathon, Europe's leading student competition focused on algorithmic trading and quantitative finance, has brought together students from 51 countries, including those from renowned institutions like MIT and Harvard. Local participants from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) in Zagreb are also competing.
Initiated as a local student project, Algotrade has grown into an internationally recognized event. This year, over a thousand applications were received from students across the globe, organized by the associations X.FER and EESTEC LC Zagreb.
This year's Hackathon features approximately 200 international students from prestigious universities like MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Oxford, alongside hundreds of Croatian students. The competition challenges participants to develop algorithms predicting market movements on a simulated trading platform. Teams have 24 hours to develop strategies, analyze data, and test models, with the winning team being the one that achieves the highest simulated wealth.
Marin Meštrović, one of the organizers and a member of EESTEC, explained the competition: "Participants need to understand programming to create an algorithm that accurately predicts market movements. The market is artificial and created by our organizing team. It involves a lot of mathematical knowledge to understand how the algorithm works and how prices move."
Meštrović emphasized that the field of algorithmic trading is particularly relevant due to the rapid changes in market prices, often influenced by geopolitical factors. "Economics, finance, mathematics, programming - many disciplines where you must be proficient to be a good algorithmic trader," he added.
The 24-hour competition is particularly ambitious and technically demanding, as explained by Danko Delimar from X.FER. Participants will have access to cloud infrastructure with over 500 CPU cores. The organizers, who are active competitors and members of Croatian Olympiad teams in informatics and related fields, designed the challenge from a participant’s perspective, ensuring it is both high-quality and challenging.
The City of Zagreb has recognized the importance of the event, with Tomislav Tomašević, the mayor, represented by Sven Lončar, who welcomed the participants. Hackathons help students quickly transition from idea to prototype and serve as a bridge between theoretical education and real-world market work.
