Over 250 participants from the combined fields of finance and information technologies came to the Centre Mont-Royal for the first edition of the Montréal FinTech Conference. The event was organized  to help discover new talent, create networking opportunities, and contribute to the visibility of Montréal's financial technology expertise.

Five contests were organized as part of the conference. William Sanger, Bertrand Nembot and Antoine Troadec won the Découverte award for the innovative character of their entry.

The purpose of the contest was to demonstrate how to draw value from, and use, unstructured data (Big Data) and data structured in financial models. Their project consisted of an investment model using data sourced from Twitter and financial data from Yahoo! Finance.

The tool they developed makes it possible to obtain additional information about the fluctuations of a company's share price throughout the day. During a two-month stock exchange simulation, their investments earned them a return of 14.79% (against 5.09% for the market in that same period). Over the coming months, they will refine their econometric model and test its limits.

William Sanger and Bertrand Nembot are currently working on their research-based master's degree in industrial engineering at Polytechnique. Antoine Troadec holds a master's in industrial engineering, also from Polytechnique. The winner's project was carried out under the supervision of Professor Thierry Warin.

In all, Finance Montréal gave out $50,000 in awards to the winners of five contests to promote the development of IT applications in the field of finance to corporate developers and the next generation of university students.

About Finance Montréal, Québec's financial cluster
Finance Montréal was created in November 2010 by the financial services industry, at the Quebec Government's invitation, and its members include banks and financial corporations, government bodies (the Quebec Government, the City of Montréal, the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, and the AMF-Québec's financial market regulator and supervisor), and universities. Finance Montréal works in the field of human resources and derivatives in order to strengthen the financial sector and achieve greater international competitiveness.

Our heartiest congratulations!

See also:
2013 Montréal FinTech Conference website
PolyFinances website (in French only)