Project Analyst Applications Now Open!
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Building real trading systems that work in live markets
We're CU Quants' hands-on trading team - a small group of developers and traders building automated strategies that actually trade in the market. This semester marks our transition from research to live trading, starting with market making in less liquid assets.
We're four people - two traders and two developers - who spend our time turning quantitative research into working trading systems. Unlike pure research teams, we're focused on the whole pipeline: from initial strategy ideas to code that executes trades in real markets.
This semester is particularly exciting because we've moved beyond paper trading. Our market making strategies are now trading live, and we're expanding into other algorithmic approaches.
We specialize in market making for illiquid assets where our expertise creates genuine value. These markets present unique challenges—they behave quite differently from the highly liquid markets featured in academic literature—but that complexity is precisely what drives our interest and opportunity.
Our trading operations run on SpreadWarden, a proprietary framework we developed in-house (see image below). Since launching our market making strategies last spring, we've achieved a 5% return, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.
This semester, we're expanding our scope through collaboration with our Research Team to identify new markets for SpreadWarden deployment and develop additional trading strategies.
You can explore more details about our methodologies and findings on our Research and Publications Page.
SpreadWarden is our proprietary trading framework built specifically for illiquid markets. It combines real-time analysis with adaptive risk management to optimize spreads and timing in low-volume environments where traditional systems struggle. The platform dynamically adjusts to market microstructure changes, maintaining competitive pricing while protecting against adverse selection in thin order books.
We provide liquidity in overlooked market segments where our capital can command meaningful spreads. Our approach emphasizes patient positioning and intelligent inventory management, using statistical models to predict mean reversion patterns. By understanding each market's unique rhythm and maintaining disciplined risk controls, we capture volatility premiums while serving genuine liquidity needs during both calm and volatile periods.