Greetings from WnCC and Quant Club. We are pleased to announce the Black-box Signal Hunt, a quantitative trading competition, conducted by The Motilal Oswal Centre for Capital Markets, designed to challenge your analytical thinking, mathematical reasoning, and systems-building skills. Participants will work on a 10-year high-frequency dataset containing 50 assets and attempt to isolate a hidden alpha signal, while also building a fast and efficient custom backtesting engine. Competition Highlights * Quant Hunt: Mathematically isolate a hidden “alpha” signal buried in a 10-year dataset of 50 assets. * Alpha Puzzle: Identify the single tradable asset (TICKER_00) hidden among 49 predictors and structured noise. * Systems Sprint: Build a custom backtesting engine in C++, Rust, or optimized NumPy capable of processing millions of rows in under 15 seconds. * Low-Latency Challenge: Optimize for speed and efficiency under strict runtime constraints on large-scale data. Important Rules and Constraints * Team Size: 2–3 members per team * No AI/ML libraries such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or scikit-learn are permitted. * Both a long-only strategy with a $1 million cap and a long-short strategy with a $2 million cap must be deployed simultaneously. * If a strategy’s Net NAV drops to zero or below, the game ends. * Submissions must include precise 5-column transaction logs for automated grading. Event Timeline * Competition Start: Friday, April 3 at 2:00 PM * Code Submission Deadline: Sunday, April 5 at 2:00 PM * Submission of Code Outcomes on New Dataset: Sunday, April 5 at 2:30 PM * Jury Stage: Sunday, April 5 at 3:00 PM Prizes * First Prize: ₹50,000 * Second Prize: ₹30,000 * Third Prize: ₹20,000 * Certificates: Top 5 finalists Registration The registration deadline is March 31 at 10:00 PM. Please register using the following link: https://forms.gle/yaB39ZjDM785onbH6 Also, join the WhatsApp group for further updates: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Dp0mRSEmliFBZMuzQkrZYa We look forward to seeing your ideas, your rigor, and your speed in action. Warm Regards, Veeraditya | Pratyaksh 9449007525 | 9662201929 WnCC Managers 2025–26 Shahu Patil General Secretary, Technical Affairs 2025-26 IIT Bombay Contact: +91 91460 50850 https://tech-iitb.org https://insti.app/org/techiitb