Geneseo’s Trading Room in South Hall had its grand opening on Friday Oct. 14. Finance, accounting and economic majors will use this room to carry out simulation labs for real-time and simulated trading. The renovation of the Trading Room from a computer lab this summer was funded by donations. Work on the Trading Room began late in the spring semester and was completed owver the summer. While the grand opening was Friday Oct. 14, the Trading Room has been open since the beginning of the fall 2016 semester.
The Trading Room is to act in the same function for finance, accounting and economics majors that a laboratory would for a science major, Dean of the School of Business Denise Rotondo said. Even though this Trading Room is new to Geneseo, Trading Rooms are commonly found in the business schools of larger institutions, according to Rotondo.
“While the room looks beautiful, the most important value to the students is the access to the data that they get through Bloomberg and through the market walls that are in there,” Rotondo said.
The Trading Room contains three Bloomberg Terminals and will provide students with a Bloomberg certification that will be useful as students matriculate into the sphere of real world business, Rotondo said.
The Bloomberg terminals are some of the most useful tools in examining how a stock has performed throughout the history of a company, according to Rotondo. The terminals help students to track stocks on their own and also to choose where to invest the Student Managed Investment Fund—a small amount of the school’s endowment that students choose to invest in different stocks and assets, Rotondo said.
President of the Student Managed Investment Fund senior Nelson Scott said the Trading Room also serves as a social environment for students interested in business.
“Along with providing us with Bloomberg and the ability to rip data into Excel to track our investments, the Trading Room provides a place for likeminded students to gather and talk about finance,” he said.
Vice President of the Student Managed Investment Fund junior Jonathan Drabek praised the Trading Room’s technology for allowing a more streamlined way to access data on stocks without having to open a lot of tabs in a browser.
While the trading room can hold classes, the layout of the room is designed to mimic the layout of a real world Trading Room—the room is designed with tables in the center so students can discuss their ideas.
“We wanted the room to be more of a collaborative space than a classroom and to give the old computer lab a different functionality,” Rotondo said.
The Trading Room adds the ability for finance, economics and accounting majors to conduct research for their classes and for their outside interests, as well.
Rotondo believes that the Trading Room will serve to strengthen the academic backing of the Student Managed Investment Fund, which will strengthen the college’s business program.
“The Trading Room gives some instant legitimacy that students can come to Geneseo and get the same amount of things out of Geneseo that they might at Binghamton or any number of other institutions,” she said.