Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Commodity Trade Game Experience.......By Gaurav Agarwal

It was 12:30 PM Saturday afternoon. Some of us from new batch who joined Trade Club of IIFT were waiting anxiously for the club coordinators to come and know what exactly this club is all about?

Then Sunil and Alok (club coordinators) entered the class along with Pankaj and Srinivas. We all started listening to them as they told us that they will be starting up with a small game which will give us a glimpse of TRADE. They explained the game to us, it was virtual commodity trading game in which we had to trade virtually in some of the commodities and had to maximise the profit over a period of time.

They explained us about the rules of the game and explained how to play it. As most of us were new to this thing most of us were finding it difficult to understand.But the Club coordinators were kind enough to have a trial version before the actual game so that every one can get a feel of it.

Here began the trial, they started giving us some of the facts and news so that one can make judicious decision in investing in any commodity.We all were really enthusiastic and came to know that how to buy, sell and short sell a commodity. Trial game made all of us know that what we were supposed to do in real game.

Then came the turn of actual game where it was announced that the winning team (team comprised of three people) will get a chance to be win movie tickets, which made the people play game like a professional trader.

Every team was give 10 tokens to invest in the commodities then began the round 1 where we were presented with the prices of some of the commodities and some facts.
People started buying the commodities through Broker (Pankaj, Sunil and Sri were acting brokers). Atmosphere out there reminded me of the old days stock exchange when people used to trade in equities in Stock Market shouting and screaming. Thanks God now everything is automated and is done on a computer terminal.

Round after round every one was getting more involved in the game and the atmosphere became really eclectic.After 12 rounds which was the last round of the game every one tried to square off their holdings, some people could not do so every thing was left on the mercy of Brokers. As the game ended we all handed over our transactions summary to the brokers of course after calculating our profits as every team wanted to maximize its profit to win the movie tickets, but no one could tell which team is the winner as there was lot of confusion.
We were also asked to give the name to our team and the best team name would win a prize for itself.

For results we had to wait for 4 hours. In evening at 6:30 PM when the coordinators came back with the results every one was anxious. Then they told the profits of each team. Finally wait was over and they declared the winning team and first two teams won the movie tickets at INOX, city centre.

Now it was turn of best team name all teams really came out with the nice names like commodiators, Apna sapna money money money, Raam Bharose etc. Apna Sapna Money Money Money was awarded the best name.

Then came one more surprise, it was now the turn of some on the spot questions, two questions were asked and 2 people could win chocolates for themselves.

In fact it was a wonderful beginning to TRADE Club activities and I would like to thank Sunil, Srinivas, Pankaj and Alok for starting such a great activity which has really helped us in developing the great interest for TRADE Club.Thanks to BLASH and we all will make sure that this club goes a long way and make all of us learn a great deal.


Gaurav Agarwal
07-09 batch,IIFT-Kolkata

1 comment:

Srinivasan said...

Oyeee...
we also had fun organizing it...
U guys were such good traders that the din was as in a real market, though Prof. T.P Gosh seemed to disagree....
n dude wen do u hav de time to blog so long...
did sunil force u to?? :-)