PreparationTech placed three students at Flow Traders, “a technology company operating in global financial
markets, using [its] proprietary technology platform to quote bid and ask prices in thousands of financial
products. [The company] also provide[s] liquidity in financial products, historically with a focus on
exchange-traded products (ETPs).”

Students participated in an on-boarding session for new traders recruited by the company. Later, they had
the chance to speak with Dennis Dijkstra, the company’s Managing Director (an alumnus of Ignatius), and
then learned about three important divisions: finance, quantitative research and software development. The
highlight for all of them was visiting the trading floor where billions of euro are traded yearly.

Students learned that Flow Traders' employees have different backgrounds: finance, econometrics, math,
statistics, physics, chemistry, engineering, business administration, human resources AI, machine learning
and IT. While certain positions require PhD and Masters degrees, others require hard technology skills such
as software development and coding obtained through higher education but also training programs and
real-life coding experience.

Everything came together once the students visited the trading floor and spoke with the traders. One
student described the trading floor as “spectacular” while another was surprised that the traders don’t have
to work on the weekends and that the trading floor is “surprisingly relaxed” given the amount of trading and
money involved.

All students stated that they are now more likely to take technology-related courses to prepare for careers
in finance and economics. In the words of one student, the internship was “quite the eye opener!”.