At the beginning of the 2025-2026 academic year, the Mendoza College of Business unveiled its newest addition as part of its renovation: a 1,200-square-foot trading room.
Mendoza’s trading room, located off the atrium in the main foyer of Mendoza, was designed as an addition to be included with the new renovations that Mendoza has been receiving since March 2025.
One hallmark of the new trading room will be the presence of Applied Investment Management, a six-credit course on company analysis, financial models and stock-pitch recommendations.
According to the press release, the new trading room will serve to replace the original New York Stock Market trading post, which had been the hallmark of Mendoza. The post had been in service in the Stock Exchange in New York from 1929 until 1981 and was donated to Mendoza in 1982.
The room itself is available for reservation by professors in Mendoza, and has been used for a trading competition as well as for creating Student International Business Council deliverables. It has also hosted the CFA Stock Pitch Competition, Wall Street Prep training and teaching assistants’ office hours, among other events. The recent student-led algorithmic trading competition, run by the Institute for Global Investing, had over $2,000 in prize money.
In a statement to The Observer, professor Jason Reed, associate director of Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing, wrote, “We see the trading room as a place to exchange ideas and work together toward common goals, and we’re really happy to support that. As Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing (NDIGI) helps bridge the learning and discernment gap for students, we believe the trading room can serve as the central hub for day-to-day learning and discernment.”
Reed continued, “I truly believe one of the best things about the Mendoza College of Business is the culture of giving back and mentoring. If the trading room can help to facilitate even more of that, then we’ve done our jobs. We want underclassmen to think of the trading room as a place to ask questions, to get help and find support when they need it most.”
Connor Kleiderer, president of the Notre Dame Investment Club, spoke with The Observer about the investment club’s use of the new trading room.
“The investment club uses it really to develop pitches. It is mostly the pitch teams that use it. We, the admins of the club, will use it to put together some of the weekly materials and stuff like that, and we will certainly use it to put together the annual report at the end of the year. But the biggest use that the club has for it is, is the pitch team,” said Kleiderer.
In general, pitch teams use the trading room to create profiles of financial data and make assumptions about a company. In regard to their use of the room, Kleiderer said the “benefit of the trading room is the financial software: Bloomberg, Capital IQ, Factset.”
The Investment Club will hear these pitches and ultimately decide whether or not to purchase the pitches that were suggested.
Kleiderer also noted the installation of double monitors in the room, as well as Bloomberg keyboards, which he said are used by major companies in this field of business. Additionally, the computers in the trading room are equipped with Windows terminals, which he said provide greater resources than a laptop would.
Reed noted that while the trading room was not modeled on a specific firm, they “focused on equipping it with cutting‑edge technical features, such as the stock ticker providing real‑time updates of the Applied Investment Management portfolio, S&P 500, and Dow 100 during market hours, to give students an authentic industry experience.”
Reed ultimately hopes that this trading experience will bridge the gap between students’ time at Notre Dame and their future experiences in the professional world.
Kleiderer noted two key advantages for Mendoza students who use the trading room before entering the workforce.
“It really is valuable to have a proper simulated work environment,” said Kleiderer. “It just gets you accustomed to the environment. It helps you learn how to work with two monitors, you learn how to optimize them, you know, just the way that you like to work.”
“We’re really excited to have the trading room available for all students. Our original vision included obvious use cases for the room, but we recognized that students will find creative ways to employ the space. We want it to be a hub where people can find help and work together,” Reed wrote. “Just the other day, I was working in the trading room, holding my office hours, when I heard a freshman struggling to access Bloomberg. A senior peeked over guided him through logging in, which then sparked a conversation about classes, discernment, internships and jobs. I hope that underclassmen think of the trading room as a place to ask questions, to get help and find support when they need it most.”
