News

Raniel Barte Taripe studied industrial engineering in the Philippines, but dabbled in the stock market on the side during his undergraduate college years.

His first investment was Jollibee Foods, a safe bet on the Philippine Stock Exchange. The company dominates the fast food market in the Philippines and produces consistent growth. Raniel executed the trade and waited for a quick payout. He was disappointed.

“Minutes passed and then hours, and there was no movement,” he says, laughing. “What I expected was that right after I bought Jollibee stocks, I would gain money. But the market does not work like that.”

The experience taught Raniel something about himself: As an investor, he prefers a more aggressive approach. Over time, he also discovered a tendency to prioritize feelings over logic.

“I am an emotional person,” he says. “So, even if there was some technical indicator to buy or sell, I did not always follow it.”

Aggressive, emotion-based investing can be a dangerous combination. Raniel’s solution was a shift toward algorithmic trading, but he needed more education to get started. His first step was an MBA with specialization in financial management at Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

Raniel next looked for a financial engineering program to improve his data science and Python coding skills. His options were limited in the Phillipines, but a Google search turned up results for WorldQuant University in the United States. Raniel was skeptical about the offer of a free, accredited, online Master of Science in Financial Engineering program.

“The first time I read that the program was free, I thought, ‘What’s the catch?’” he says. “But I read everything on the website and the student testimonials, and everything seemed legitimate, so I enrolled.”

The content was challenging, but Raniel found support in a global community. His classmates came from Afghanistan, China, India, Nigeria, and other countries. During his capstone course, he built his first algorithmic trading model, which he later deployed in the gold market.

“What I love about WQU is the collaboration and the hands-on approach to education,” he says.

Raniel graduated in 2024 and now applies his WQU knowledge as the founder of Quantalpha Algorithms, a financial services company that takes a quantitative approach to investing, primarily in foreign currency exchange. He is also a lead corporate trainer at DataSense Analytics and a professor of industrial engineering at Quezon City University in the Philippines.

When people ask, Raniel is happy to tell them about WQU. He signed up to be an alumni ambassador and is working to help WQU grow in the Philippines.

“WorldQuant University is offering opportunities across the globe, especially for data science and financial engineering,” he says. “I believe in the slogan: Talent is global, opportunity is not.”