Each team will be provided with the source code to a live trading application already interfaced to work with Alpaca's API. All you will need to do is create a paper account on Alpaca.Markets Trading API, and input your access keys. Below you can see a live-feed of our account that is currently trading a basic long-short momentum strategy on $SPY.
Hello, we are the Financial Mathematics Association (FMA) at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. A student group on campus led by maths graduate students in the Minnesota Center for Actuarial and Financial Mathematics (MCFAM).
We are putting on the UMN's first ever systematic trading competition. If you're interested in Math, Finance or Programming, or any combination of the three, you're in the right place. Participants are encouraged to form teams to harness the strength of interdisciplinary skills, interests and experiences, to create a winning strategy that will both beat the market and the competition. This isn't just about taking the best bets, but analyzing the markets, implementing your strategy and convincing industry professionals that you can be trusted with paper money.
We invite you to join the forum and ask any questions you have in the 2026 Trading Competition Sign-Up thread. Checkout the competition page for more information. Feel free to clone the repo, create an Alpaca Account, and begin working on your implementation. We will eventually create a repo for each team to submit their code implementations to.
Registration Opens:
February 14, 2026 11:59PM CST
Registration Ends:
March 14, 2026 11:59PM CST
Submission Deadline:
March 31, 2026 11:59PM CST
Presentations:
April 03, 2026 04:00pm CST
Trading Starts:
April 06, 2026 Market Open
Trading Ends:
April 17, 2026 Market Close