Education/training
Trading program taps into video game generationAs a high school student, Gianluca Cedolia earned his best marks in math. But it was his love of playing video games that may have laid the foundation for his success as one of Canada's youngest equity traders. |
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 [ 2007-08-15 ] |
Gianluca Cedolia, 21 and his brother Gilberto, 26, recently opened Swift Trade's new office in Milan, Italy.
"The main thing that helped is that, at least in the early stages, I didn't consider any money I lost as money. I thought of it as points, just like in a video game," the 21-year-old says. "Other people were freaking out about losing $100, but I thought of it as 100 points I had to earn back."
After graduating from high school in Toronto two years ago, Cedolia became a full-time trader at Swift Trade as part of its High School Graduate Trader Program. The in-house training curriculum is tailored for novice traders with a strong work ethic.
"The training process was frustrating at times," Cedolia says. "You're sitting in front of a computer, trying to figure out a strategy, but it paid off in the end ... On the first day, I knew I loved it and after five months of training, realized I had to go for it."
Cedolia consistently turned a profit of well more than $30,000 a month, trading U.S. Equities on the New York and NASDAQ stock exchanges for the last two years of the trading program. Together with his brother, he recently opened Swift Trade's new office in Milan, Italy. He expects to return to Canada in a couple of years, when he plans to go to college or university.
Swift Trade's program for high school graduates has, admittedly, been met with some criticism, but Swift Trade president Peter Beck believes the video game generation has many of the skills needed to succeed in trading. "We noticed that people who were good at video games had a better chance of becoming good traders," he says.
His hunch was confirmed by an article in the Harvard Business Review that highlighted a study which concluded video games develop skills necessary in today's workforce, particularly in the computer field.
"Gamers learn how to concentrate on many different parts of a screen," Beck says. "That's a skill that's very useful in trading ... The more information you can digest, the better you can take advantage of opportunities."
Gamers also have reflexes demanded by trading. "You have to be fast on a keyboard," Beck says. "You also need good decision-making skills. Another great advantage is that gamers can learn key combinations ... In games, you have to memorize them and work fast to do well. In trading, you execute trades with key combinations and may need to memorize more than 200 of them to take advantage of key opportunities."
Swift Trade was established in 1998 as Canada's first direct access trading firm and has more than 150 offices in 32 countries. It was ranked seventh on Profit magazine's hottest startups in 2001 and second on its fastest growing companies list in 2004.
QUICK FACTS
The Swift Trade High School Program is designed to bridge the gap in income and quality of work between university graduates and those with a high school diploma. After an in-house training curriculum tailored for novice traders, Swift Trade provides real time market training. For more information, visit www.swifttrade.com.
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