Simulated stock exchange
New center teaches students financial techniques
Archived article from Nov 9, 2001
By Dave Muha
Rutgers business students will gain authentic Wall Street trading and research experience without leaving University Avenue, thanks to the school's new Global Financial Market Center. The center, which is located on the Newark campus, is a $1.2 million high-tech classroom designed to simulate the work environment of the nation's leading brokerage houses. It is the only classroom of its kind in New Jersey and one of approximately 20 in the country.
"I applaud the aggressive approach Rutgers business is taking to ensure that students are well-equipped to tackle the challenges of a global economy," said President Francis L. Lawrence at the center's Oct. 29 opening. "The Global Financial Market Center will help provide the kind of environment students expect to find at a major research university, and will help prepare them to enter -- and advance in -- a highly competitive profession."
Lawrence joined Newark Provost Norman Samuels and Dean Howard Tuckman of the Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick in recognizing donors and cutting the ceremonial ribbon.
The classroom, with 40 workstations, gives students access to real-time and delayed market feeds for U.S. and foreign exchanges, as well as an abundance of corporate financial and accounting data, including stock pricing histories, news histories and Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
"This facility allows our faculty and students to engage in simulated trading, use worldwide financial-market data to problem solve, learn to understand and manipulate financial databases, and actively construct many kinds of financial analyses," noted Tuckman. "For instance, finance students will use the center's data to construct volatility measures of stock returns, better understand the statistical properties of portfolios and learn about measures of portfolio performance. Training of this type is invaluable for anyone who wants a career as a researcher, portfolio manager or analyst."
While the benefits of the room are most obvious for finance majors, students in the school's other academic disciplines will benefit as well. Information systems students, for instance, will be able to study the technology behind real-time data feeds, and marketing students will be able to use the databases to do business-to-business research. New courses are being developed to take full advantage of the room's capabilities.
The room also features two large panels that flash live market data and news headlines and a pair of flat-screen television monitors that display news analysis from CNBC and Bloomberg News. An electronic stock ticker will be installed later this semester.
Completion of the center has been one of Tuckman's highest priorities since joining Rutgers in 1999. Major gifts from IDT Corporation and Sun Microsystems, whose servers and workstations form the technological backbone of the facility, helped make the project a reality. Jim Courter, IDT's CEO, and Casey Palowitch, Northeast education district technology manager, were recognized at the ceremony, as were individual donors Josh Weston, Andy Melnick, Greg Ostroff and Jeff Serkes.
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