by Barbara Black

A new Investment and Trading Centre was launched May 28 by the John Molson School of Business in its quarters in the Guy Métro Building.

The centre will enable students to perform portfolio analysis for long-term investment decisions in a state-of-the-art facility with 13 workstations and three electronic display boards delivering real-time data feeds from all North American exchanges.

It was funded through donations from W. Brian Edwards (BCom 71), Ned Goodman (Hon LL.D 97), Brian J. Steck (BCom 68), Richard J. Przybylski (president, CPMS), and by the John Dobson Foundation, as well as Randy Kelly, president of Formula Growth, and Rene Catafogo, a partner at Formula Growth.

The investment trading centre replicates the live environment of a real investment house, with access to financial data and research reports using local and international data feeds. The trading room is named after Formula Growth Limited, an investment company focused on emerging growth stocks in the United States, founded by John W. Dobson in 1960. Mr. Dobson will be given an honorary doctorate at the JMSB convocation ceremony on June 11.

The Formula Growth Trading Room, part of the Investment and Trading Centre, incorporates the use of two electronic display boards to deliver real-time feeds in the traditional investment house manner, displaying international indices and US equities and equity news; Canadian equities and news; currencies; world market news; US futures and commodities news; top Canadian equities, as well as the top 5 gainers and losers.

A third electronic board will be a real-time ticker board displaying the top five stocks by volume, percentage change, and absolute change for all the major North American markets. Connected directly to Reuters, the centre is linked to all Canadian exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange, the Amex, NASDAQ, Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The facility, which will provide professional training to business students in investment and portfolio management, is also aimed at enhancing industry-university links by providing an opportunity for firms in the industry to train new employees and to upgrade skills for portfolio managers. The facility will also act as a data laboratory for professors who are conducting research.