Sales and trading interview questions

Everything you need to know about sales and trading input together for the first time. When I interviewed for sales and trading summer analyst positions in — at J.

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting! Being an athlete helps a lot because it demonstrates your drive and risk-taking ability. There are also a few transfers from the middle office and other teams at the bank. There are 1. For sales , you can take a similar approach, but you should focus on developing client relationships rather than learning all the technical details of a product. The main difference is that you need to pick stories that demonstrate the traits that salespeople and traders want to see.

Sales and trading interview questions

Sales and trading interview questions can be some of the toughest in all of finance. The reason being is that there is no division within major investment banks that is more diverse in what they do than in sales and trading. Within any given sales and trading division you'll have folks who focus on equity derivatives, mortgage backed securities, interest rate swaps, distressed debt, among dozens of other products. Note: Each "product" or asset class will normally have a dedicated desk that will contain sales people, traders, and potentially others including sales traders , quants, and structurers. The issue with sales and trading is that in a superday for a summer analyst or full-time role, you'll be interviewing with at least three members of the sales and trading division who could come from any desk and obviously they can't help but judge you based on whether you'd be a good fit for their desk. What this means practically is that interviewees need to have a broad understanding of what occurs on a trading floor in order to be successful in an interview. In other words, you need contextual understanding. No one expects you in an interview to understand how exactly to think about gamma in the context of a complex equity derivatives trade or how to think about how an out-of-court restructuring impacting distressed bonds. However, having contextual understanding of where those things fit into the broader sales and trading division and what the basics of the major desks are is critically important. Because of just how little information is out there on sales and trading interviews, I created Sales and Trading Interviews , which contains over sales and trading interview questions and guides including breakdowns of all the major desks. If you are at all interested in breaking into sales and trading, this is the definitive guide I wish I had when I first interviewed and started as a summer analyst at Goldman Sachs. Now let's review some questions. Also note that at the end of this page I go over some common types of sales and trading interview question along with some general prep advice for your interviews. Below are some links to help you navigate to each of the questions and answers on this page easily. I've tried to pick a diverse selection here to give you an idea of what kinds of questions to expect and prepare for along with some, like question two and three, that will almost certainly appear in an interview.

Par value, or face value of the bond, is the amount that the bond issuer will pay the bondholder at its expiry. Being straightforward is crucial as it demonstrates how prepared you are.

The sales and trading interview is meant to test for finance knowledge, market interest and ability to handle stress. For sales, interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate why a trade makes sense to a client is important. For trading, being calm and remaining rational is key. Integrity is also increasingly important due to rogue trader blow ups and reputational risk stemming from non-finance related activities that have become Hollywood cliches. Sales, trading and structuring demand different personalities. Everyone has to be smart with sales leaning more towards EQ, but sales teams stress getting a CFA as a means of bolstering credibility , but salespeople have to be good communicators with an understanding of markets while traders will need to convey they have well-reasoned views and are calm under stressful situations. Structurers are expected to be more cerebral.

Sales and trading summer analyst internships are among the best to have during your undergraduate career. Not only will they open up the world of sales and trading to you - showing you how a trading floor really operates - they will also carry enough "prestige" to help you pivot to other roles should you want to try something new like investment banking or equity research. Part of the reason why this site was created is that much of the information out there on sales and trading is terribly outdated or non-existent. Some seem to think that you can walk into an interview - not knowing what something like rates trading refers to - and walk out with an offer. In reality, the way that sales and trading has evolved over the past five years is that almost everyone who starts full-time will come through the sales and trading summer analyst program of the bank. Further, unlike in investment banking where everyone is a bit of a cog in the pitch book machine, in sales and trading individual talent, personality traits, and preferences plays a large role in success and failure. This is part of the reason why this site has harped so much on making sure you understand what the major desks within a bank are and decide early on which ones most interest you. Because the reality is some will excel in rates trading while failing in FX sales, for example. You need to be self-reliant and figure out the best place on the trading floor to land. Because of just how diverse a trading floor is, and the fact that your interviewers may come from any desk on the trading floor, sales and trading internship interviews require significant preparation across five question types.

Sales and trading interview questions

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting! Being an athlete helps a lot because it demonstrates your drive and risk-taking ability. There are also a few transfers from the middle office and other teams at the bank. There are 1. For sales , you can take a similar approach, but you should focus on developing client relationships rather than learning all the technical details of a product. The main difference is that you need to pick stories that demonstrate the traits that salespeople and traders want to see. For example:.

Graveyard of wbc

One of the ironies about sales and trading interviews is that while they can cover a lot of ground, if you have a few stellar answers or less common answers than most give then you can really stand out and land the offer. What is a long put position in relation to delta, gamma, theta, vega, and rho? Usually, this happens when interest rates fall and the borrower would benefit from redeeming and reissuing the bond at a lower interest rate. As you can probably guess, general obligation bonds are backed by the general taxing authority of the issuer whereas revenue bonds are tied to the actual revenue generation of the project the bonds are funded but are not backed generally by the taxing authority if the project were to fail. Defense Contractors. What are treasury futures? For bonds maturing in two years or more, to calculate this in an interview you would have to use the YTM estimation formula, which is: If you're looking to test out more variations of this question, you can use a YTM calculator. You want to demonstrate interest and commitment by researching the job you are applying for and the company you want to work at. I started off on this project by asking myself one simple question: if I wanted to teach someone to not only succeed in getting a sales and trading offer, also but excel once they get into the bank, how would I do it? Don't worry, no one is expecting you to know everything about how to model out a CLO waterfall although that's a common test for a summer analyst at the end of their time on the CLO desk. I've read some introductory materials on equity and other asset valuations, but I don't feel comfortable enough yet to actually carry them out.

As I wrote about in the rather long sales and trading overview post, FX is one of the more interesting areas of a trading floor to be on. In particular if you like flow trading and like to think in relativistic terms because everything in FX is relative.

It has a small section on brain teasers. This is geared for recruiting of any kind. Also note that at the end of this page I go over some common types of sales and trading interview question along with some general prep advice for your interviews. A yield curve graphs the relationship between the interest rates and maturities of bonds of the same credit quality. Where does repo trading fit into the broader trading floor? You then should get into why you find areas of credit like high yield to be fascinating. At the end of every interview you'll have the opportunity to ask your interviewer questions. Defense Contractors. What you want to do is have an idea of a broad area you think you would like to be in, while expressing that you could be entirely wrong and find a different area to be a far better fit. What are credit spreads? The model assumes you know the level of volatility and that it stays constant over the life of the option.