Inauguration of the South Mediterranean University (SMU) Trading Room

Inauguration of the South Mediterranean University (SMU) Trading Room

On June 22^nd 2023, South Mediterranean University inaugurated its trading room aiming to integrate practice and theory and to make the SMU students experience the exciting activity of international financial marketplaces.

The SMU trading room is a simulation of an effective financial marketplace with 18 specialized workstations giving direct access to a wide range of real-time financial data and to trading and portfolio management simulation platforms using up to date Artificial intelligence techniques.

The trading room contains also Ticker tapes and display screens showing international news, information and analyses relating to macroeconomic indicators, stocks, fixed income securities, commodities, exchange rates and several other financial instruments.

Several sessions at both the undergraduate and master’s degree levels will be offered within the SMU trading room, where students will benefit from direct access to Refinitiv® - formerly Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk- database including its both components, Eikon® and Datastream®.

Refinitiv ® Eikon offers real time access to all financial market data around the world, to information of thousands of companies from more than 170 countries and to a very sophisticated set of financial analysis tools and apps. The second component, Datastream®, gives access to more than 14 million time series relating to macroeconomic, microeconomic and financial indicators.

Students will also benefit from more than 40 real-time interactive trading simulation cases with very diversified learning outcomes, allowing them to practice the design of trading strategies and the submission of market orders on different types of financial instruments, like in a real marketplace with price discovery. Students will use artificial intelligence tools including Python^TM to design and set up Many algorithmic trading strategies on well adapted trading cases.

In addition to the Interactive Trading platform, a Portfolio Management simulation platform will allow the students to create investment portfolios using virtual money and based on both technical and fundamental analysis techniques. The students will learn and practice how to assign and to execute buy, sell, and hold ratings, which will allow them to participate to very exciting competitions and challenges organized inside the SMU, and to international competitions including those annually organized by Refinitiv® and CFA® Institute.

The Trading room activity covers also regulation and ethical aspects relating to financial market activities, including ESG concerns.

Let’s remind that the SMU is the first University in the Maghreb region with Finance programs affiliated to CFA® Institute, meaning that SMU Finance programs help students obtain the CFA® charter, the golden standard among the investment professional credentials worldwide.

Thanks to the creation of the trading room, SMU launched new international/market need oriented certification preparation programs including:

-The Chartered Market Technician (CMT®) Certificate, an international Top ranked credential for those who would like to become skilled in Technical Analysis,

-The Financial Risk Management (FRM®) Certificate, an international Top ranked and highly demanded credential in the risk management industry worldwide.

-The Global Banking & Fintech Certificate, for those who would like to master the necessary aspects relating to innovative AI tools relating to the Modern Banking and Financial engineering activity

-The Equity Research & Financial Modelling Certificate, covering skills in AI based fundamental analysis, modeling and forecasting techniques, necessary for those would like to work inside worldclass financial analysis houses.