There is age old wisdom in understanding one key concept: Knowledge is power. Newman of the nineties sitcom “Seinfeld” understood that he could leverage the flow of information to solicit responses from people. This is what happens in the financial world every day. There are millions of articles written and countless ticks on a stock chart. This information moves markets and solicit responses from market participants. Finance professionals require platforms that can help them sift through the abyss of data and get them the information that is relevant to their projects. Tulane is empowering its students by providing them access to the very tools that they will be using day in and day out in their future roles as analysts, traders and bankers.
Many people in financial services show up for work the first day with very little clue about the platforms on which they will be performing most of their work. In addition to having to learn an entirely new professional skill set, they have to spend time familiarizing themselves with the systems. This substantially steepens the learning curve. Having received feedback from former graduates, recruiters and industry professionals alike, the Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business opted to train its students on the platforms that professionals use at work every day. A prime example of this is Tulane’s partnership with Thomson Reuters which provides students access to the new and powerful Thomson Reuters Eikon platform. There are 86 Eikon-equipped terminals in the business school, 44 of which are in Tulane’s state-of-the-art trading room. In addition to Eikon, the trading stations are equipped with the Morningstar database and Trading Technologies’ X-Trader. If you require even more information, the Freeman school also boasts 12 Bloomberg terminals in the recently finished Bloomberg Lab.
In addition, Tulane provides students with the opportunity to interact with professional trainers from Reuters, Trading Technologies and Morningstar. The trainers provide sessions on how to make the most of the programs’ features. I recently had the opportunity to take part in a Reuters training session and can attest to the fact that knowledge of these operating systems is invaluable. In a data intensive field such as finance, it is pertinent to be able to pull up information in real time. The better that you become at gathering this information, the better your chances are to advance in your career. In addition to professional trainers, Tulane also gives its students access to certification courses in both Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters Eikon. This shows employers that they are recruiting students that are serious about the field and more prepared to tackle the fast-paced, data-driven industry of finance.
Students also get hands on experience on all of these platforms through coursework. I have become very familiar with all of these platforms in just a few months. I have used both Rueters and Bloomberg for building DCF models of oil and gas firms in my energy modeling class. I have also used advanced charting to do technical analysis of equities in my investments course. The speed and responsiveness of X-Trader makes it a valuable tool in my trading course. Every student that has taken advantage of the vast resources that Tulane has put at their fingertips is in a position to be a leader in their profession. A.B. Freeman students don’t just do research, we have the tools that “control information”.