Four divisions. A $100K paper fund. An open-source AI analytics platform. 2nd at the national CFA AI Investment Challenge.
About
Exeter's first quant-focused student society. Coding, econometrics, modelling, applied to a real $100K paper portfolio and an open-source AI analytics platform we build ourselves.
Four divisions. Industry partners like WorldQuant. Membership £5 via the Exeter Students' Guild.
Divisions
Each owns a part of what we build. Specialise or rotate.
Ships the platform. Builds the AI tools, the data pipelines, and the parts of the stack that turn market news into insights in minutes.
Head Maksim Kitikov
Open team page →Strategy design, backtesting, and live paper portfolios. Runs the $100,000 simulated fund and prepares members for quant interviews.
Econometrics, statistical modelling, and the data layer behind everything we publish. Owners of CAPM, event studies, and factor work.
Head Kirill Papka
Open team page →Long-form writing, academic-style papers, and the public face of what the society discovers. Turns the work into something people read.
Markets
Sample telemetry. Real platform output below.
SPDR S&P 500
ICE Brent crude
20Y Treasury bond ETF
Nvidia Corp
Gold ETF
US dollar index
The Fund
Launched Jan 2026 on TradingView. Every trade logged.
Paper-traded for education only. Not a regulated fund, no real client capital, no investment advice. Performance based on TradingView paper-trading at the published timestamp.
Insights
Every trade and note, published. Reproducible.
Alexander Cookson & Thomas Speed
Paper-traded a long Brent futures position after geopolitical disruption at the Strait of Hormuz, where ~20% of global oil supply flows. Over 150 tankers suspended transit. Entry $75.875, stop $73.25, ~50× leverage, 0.9% portfolio risk.
Reference events: 2019 Abqaiq strikes, 2020 Soleimani strike, 2019 Gulf of Oman tanker attacks, all showed consistent upward price response.
In-depth notes from the Research division on macroeconomic shifts and policy moves.
Authored by the Research team.
CAPM and multi-factor analyses on sector ETFs and indices, reproducible code.
Authored by the Data & Modelling team.
Each shipped feature, the AI behind it, and what we learned building it.
Authored by the Innovation team.
Committee 2025/26
Elected committee for 2025/26.
President
Co-Head, Innovation & Emerging Tech
Vice President
Leadership & strategy
Head of Quant Trading & Investments
$100K simulated fund, strategy research
Head of Data & Modelling
Econometrics, factor work
Platforms
The team ships two open platforms. The analytics platform answers what just moved the market and why. The execution platform, built for the CFA AI Investment Challenge, answers how to work a large order once you decide to trade.
01 · Market analytics
Turns global market news into clear, simple insights in minutes. AI-driven news detection ranks the most impactful events, a CAPM event study measures the abnormal returns, and interactive Plotly charts surface what actually moved.
02 · Optimal execution
The platform that took 2nd place at the national CFA Institute AI Investment Challenge final. A regime-aware reinforcement learning agent works large institutional orders and is benchmarked against TWAP, VWAP and Almgren-Chriss on identical execution windows, with an LLM governance layer that explains every decision in plain English.
Events & Recognition
Team QuantFin Exeter, representing the University of Exeter, took 2nd place at the national CFA Institute AI Investment Challenge final at Capital Group's London office. Five finalist teams presented original AI solutions to real investment problems. The platform shown is live at quantfin.dev/execution and published in the repository below.
Team: Maksim Kitikov, Thomas Nguyen, Kirill Papka, Harrison Maxwell. Mentor: Sunil Shukla, CFA. Other finalists: Lancaster (winner), Heriot-Watt, Manchester, Durham.
First official society event, in collaboration with WorldQuant BRAIN. Guest speaker Denis Drobinin covered WorldQuant BRAIN, the Consulting Programme, the Quantitative Finance Modelling Competition, and pathways into quant research.
Bateman Lecture Theatre, Building One. Free tickets, free pizza.
Selected by Student Startups Exeter to level up the platform, validate it properly, and push for funding. The MVP is already live.
Fast paced, game style, built around real past quant interview questions from firms like Citadel and Jane Street, with clear walkthroughs. Quiz prepared by Kirill Papka.
The Quant Trading & Investments division launched a $100K paper fund on TradingView in January 2026. First published trade closed at +$2,179 (+2.18% portfolio, +8.37% on capital).
Partners
Industry, academic, and institutional partners across our events and programmes.
Industry partner
Quant asset management. First guest speaker session with Denis Drobinin covering WorldQuant BRAIN, the Consulting Programme, and the QF Modelling Competition.
Recognition
Hosted the national AI Investment Challenge where Team QuantFin Exeter placed 2nd.
University
Home institution. Business School and Department of Economics support.
Guild
Affiliating body. Membership, room bookings, governance.
Programme
Selected our platform for the Spring Pre Incubator Programme.
Venue
Where our $100K simulated paper fund runs.
Community
Daily market thoughts, event coordination, interview prep, questions to the committee. Open to members and visitors.
Reviews
"Best technical society at Exeter. Real projects, real coding."
First-year, Maths
"WorldQuant session was the most useful event all year."
Society member
"Platform is impressive. These students actually build things."
Industry visitor
Membership
£5 via the Exeter Students' Guild. All events, all sessions.
£5.00
Registered through the Exeter Students' Guild.
Free
QuantFin@groups.exeterguild.com
Open
Or email the society address.
Contact
Email, WhatsApp, or LinkedIn. We reply.
