How five UF business students faced 7,000 international competitors and took home first place
From mid-January to mid-March, the five of us competed in the Bridgewater x Metaculus Forecasting Contest — an international tournament where participants assign probabilities to macroeconomic and geopolitical questions and get scored on relative accuracy. Over 7,000 people from more than 700 schools across 93 countries entered. The University of Florida placed first among 90 universities.
We are all members of the Caimanes Student-Managed Equity Hedge Fund at the UF Warrington College of Business, where we manage a live portfolio and run a long/short equity strategy. The five of us accounted for 91% of UF's total points. On the undergraduate leaderboard, which had more than 1,350 competitors, two of us finished in the top five. Krishang placed second, Marcos placed fifth, Sebastian finished 20th, Theo finished 23rd and Marco finished 111th. Together, we made more than $3,600.
This is the second year UF students have competed. Three of us (Marcos, Sebastian and Marco) signed up last year after learning that Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, doesn't typically recruit from UF. If the recruiting pipeline doesn't exist, you build the case that it should.
The forecasting process turned out to be close to what we already do in Caimanes. Analyzing historical data, identifying what drives a business and building a view that differs from consensus are the same research skills, whether we are analyzing a stock or assigning a probability to a macroeconomic question.
In Caimanes, the goal is to find situations where we have a genuine edge and express it in a way the market hasn't fully appreciated. Forecasting works similarly. The best questions were the ones where we could use historical context to anchor our view, compare our thesis against consensus and move away from the crowd only when we had a clear reason to do so.
Consistency mattered more than any single prediction. After reading “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction” by Philip Tetlock, we took its core findings seriously. The best forecasters update frequently when new information arrives. Our worst predictions, across all five of us, came on questions we stopped paying attention to.
Our best predictions came when we could pair domain knowledge with discipline, updating continuously while filtering out noise. As we each put in more reps over the two months, the time it took to research a question and develop a view naturally decreased. We started to know what to look for, identifying the most important driving force behind a question and building a view around that.
We disagreed with each other constantly, which helped. Throughout the tournament, we shared forecasts, argued over probabilities and challenged each other's frameworks. Those arguments made us more accurate because they forced us to either defend our reasoning or change our minds. When there was more uncertainty around a question, our individual discipline and domain knowledge showed through the most.
Bridgewater launched this contest to find talent that traditional recruiting misses, reaching top performers from schools and backgrounds they hadn't historically recruited from. Previous participants have been recruited into Bridgewater's internship program and several have gone on to receive full-time roles.
After two months of doing this competitively, we understand why. Tracking a forecast is a lot like tracking an investment. You have to decide what news actually matters, when to update your view and when to sit tight.
We entered this tournament to show that UF students can compete at the highest level. The results say we did.
About the students:
Marcos Ortega is a second-year honors finance student and portfolio manager in Caimanes. He is an incoming investment associate intern at Bridgewater Associates in New York City and an incoming investment intern at an Arizona pension fund.
Sebastian DiBenedetto is a second-year finance student and portfolio manager in Caimanes. He is an incoming Master of Science in Finance student and incoming asset management summer analyst intern at Goldman Sachs in New York City.
Krishang Surapaneni is a first-year finance student and vice president of risk management in Caimanes. He is an incoming summer equity research intern at DSM Capital Partners.
Theo Machado is a second-year finance and economics student and consumer discretionary analyst in Caimanes. He is an incoming summer fund analyst intern at BTG Pactual.
Marco Pizarro is a second-year finance student and financial institutions group sector lead in Caimanes. He is an incoming Master of Science in Finance student and equity research summer analyst intern at Goldman Sachs in New York City.