CHICAGO, March 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced the winners of its 13(th) annual CME Group Trading Challenge, including the first-place winners from Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore. This is the first time a Singaporean team has won the competition, and the third year in a row that the winning team has been from a university outside the United States.

This year, nearly 500 teams made up of more than 1,800 students from 30 countries around the world participated. The four-week electronic trading competition is open exclusively to teams of currently enrolled graduate and undergraduate students, offering them a chance to learn hands-on techniques for trading futures across all major asset classes on CQG's real-time professional trading platform. The trading challenge also helps educate the next generation of finance professionals on the significance of CME Group's global derivatives markets.

"CME Group is committed to education and innovation for the next generation of traders and market participants," said Anita Liskey, CME Group's Managing Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications. "Understanding the significance of our markets in today's interconnected global economy is more critical than ever, and we're pleased that so many students from around the world continue to participate."

"The prestigious CME Group Trading Challenge is a capstone event for our final year Banking and Fund Management students at Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Business Management, where they compete and benchmark themselves against the best in the world," said Anthony Ng, Senior Lecturer at Nanyang Polytechnic. "We believe that the invaluable experience they have gained from participating in this competition will prepare them for a successful career in the financial industry, be it in risk management, fund management or trading."

"I am very excited that the extra effort we put into the competition this year resulted in a fourth-place win," said Dr. Roberto Caccia, Faculty Director for the Burridge Center for Finance at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder. "As a former Wall Street professional, it's great to see opportunities like the CME Group Trading Challenge complement what we teach in the classroom. This not only showcases students' financial skills, but enables them to compete in real-world settings."

"The CME Group Trading Challenge has become an annual tradition and CQG is proud to be a partner," said Rod Giffen, President of CQG. "We are committed to providing real-time trading opportunities for the next generation of traders, students from universities around the world, in an ever-changing trading environment. We would like to honor the winning teams and congratulate all the participants for continuing the tradition."

Students on the following winning teams will receive a cash prize and are invited to attend a one-day market education conference at CME Group on April 15:



    University (Country) - Team Name    Final Simulated
                                        Account Balance
    ---                                 ---------------

    Nanyang Polytechnic (Singapore)
     - Team Alpha                                            $500,018.75
    -------------------------------                          -----------

    Carnegie Mellon University
     (U.S.) - Team Scotty Dogs of
     the Dow                                                 $443,430.00
    -----------------------------                            -----------

    Concordia University (Canada) -
     Team Yolo                                               $355,750.00
    -------------------------------                          -----------

    University of Colorado Boulder
     (U.S.) --Team CU_Ugrad_1                                $326,614.38
    ------------------------------                           -----------

CME Group has made risk management education a top priority. In addition to offering interactive events like the Trading Challenge, CME Group provides education about the global economy and markets with a variety of tools. Recently, the company launched Futures Institute, an innovative new online platform for futures and options education, trading simulation and market research. The Futures Institute works with partners across the industry to distribute best-in-class education offering a blend of live instruction, interactive training modules, market research and training. CME Group also offers Futures Fundamentals, an innovative website that explains the role of futures markets in everyday life. The goal of the site is to make financial education an engaging experience for anyone, regardless of how well versed they are in the world of finance. Additionally, in partnership with the National 4-H Council, CME Group offers a Commodity Carnival game and an interactive app, Risk Ranch, which educates kids about managing risk in agriculture.

Students learned about market events by accessing live Dow Jones newsfeeds and The Hightower Report.

About CME Group
As the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) is where the world comes to manage risk. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate. CME Group brings buyers and sellers together through its CME Globex® electronic trading platform, its trading facilities in New York and Chicago, and through its London-based CME Europe derivatives exchange. CME Group also operates one of the world's leading central counterparty clearing providers through CME Clearing and CME Clearing Europe, which offer clearing and settlement services across asset classes for exchange-traded contracts and over-the-counter derivatives transactions. These products and services ensure that businesses everywhere can substantially mitigate counterparty credit risk.

CME Group is a trademark of CME Group Inc. The Globe Logo, CME, Globex and Chicago Mercantile Exchange are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and the Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc. NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are registered trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. KCBOT, KCBT and Kansas City Board of Trade are trademarks of The Board of Trade of Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Further information about CME Group (NASDAQ: CME) and its products can be found at www.cmegroup.com.

About CQG, Inc.
CQG, Inc. (www.cqg.com) provides high-performance trade routing, global market data, and advanced technical analysis. CQG partners with more than one hundred Futures Commission Merchant environments and provides Direct Market Access to more than forty exchanges through its global network of co-located Hosted Exchange Gateways. CQG's server-side order management tools for spreading, market aggregation, and smart orders are unsurpassed for speed and ease-of-use. CQG's market data feed consolidates more than seventy-five sources, including exchanges worldwide for futures, options, fixed income, foreign exchange, and equities as well as data on debt securities, industry reports, and financial indices. CQG has received the Prop Traders' ISV of the Year award from FOW and the Best Technical Analysis Platform award from The Technical Analyst. CQG is headquartered in Denver, Colorado with sales and support offices worldwide.

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SOURCE CME Group