Front Row: Morgan
Benninghofen, sophomore computer science major from Wayzata, MN; Jeffrey Ross,
senior computer science major from Rapid City. Back Row: Tiati Thelen, sophomore
math major from Brandon, SD; Josef Ceritelli, senior from Sacramento, CA.
RAPID CITY, SD (May 14, 2018) – A team of South Dakota School
of Mines & Technology students have won the annual Butterfield Cup. The
competition is part of the university’s CSC
340 software engineering course, taught by assistant professor of
mathematics and computer science Paul Hinker, Ph.D. This year’s contest
challenged students to write software that performs technical analysis of publicly
traded stocks and make buy and sell decisions to manage a portfolio.
The fifth annual Butterfield Cup winners are Tiati Thelen, Josef Ceritelli, Morgan
Benninghofen and Jeffrey Ross. The winning program, named ‘Darth Trader,’
topped nine other teams in performance tests. The
judging included running the trading programs against stock market data from
various times in the past. Each program trader was given an initial cash
budget and then allowed to run for 250 – 350 trading days.
The Darth Trader team brought back a gain of about 35
percent averaged over three trading periods. The trading periods were
chosen so that there was one each of an up-trending market (calendar year
2017), a sideways trending market and a down trending market. There were nine
other teams of four to five students also in the competition.
The Butterfield Cup is an annual competition
created by local entrepreneurs to recognize the best mobile app or software
produced by a team of students in a semester. Previous winners have gone on to
become finalists in the Governor’s
Giant Vision Competition.