Sales and trading interview questions

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Everything you need to know about sales and trading in , put together for the first time. When I interviewed for sales and trading summer analyst positions in — at J. Morgan and Goldman Sachs, respectively — I frankly had no idea what I was doing. I was lucky to get through the recruiting process and get offers at both Goldman and JPM. But ever since my interviews nearly five years ago I believed that someone needed to create a definitive course that walked you through the entire sales and trading recruiting process, explained how to answer top interview questions, and walked through what desks exist and what they do. The result is the Sales and Trading Interview Prep Course, which contains 13 guides and over real-world sales and trading interview questions and answers.

Sales and trading interview questions

The key to acing a sales and trading interview is preparation—and beginning your preparation as soon as possible. This question is not so relevant for someone with industry experience but is especially important for career switchers. For example, if you went back to school to get an MBA or a degree in quantitative mathematics, you need to have a good reason for the career switch. For salespeople, the important thing is that you love to sell. This question deserves some thought. You need to think carefully about what in your personality and past work experience makes you more suited to sales and trading versus investment banking. You could potentially use this information to your advantage during the interview, but be careful, since there are always exceptions to the rule. A lot of times, your model portfolio will apparently draw the derision of your interviewer. Try to justify your initial portfolio recommendation succinctly and articulately. Whatever you do, keep your answer brief. You need to show that you can take the best parts of a stock story and articulate a convincing case quickly. The ideal scenario here is that you give your pitch, and the interviewer asks a few follow-up questions that you are able to discuss intelligently because you are very familiar with the story. There is a common misperception that traders enjoy taking wild amounts of risk. This is simply not true. Traders are paid to take appropriate risks.

The guide is excellent in providing a basic understanding of the products and what types of questions you can receive. With all that said, there's no reason to get too overwhelmed.

If you are interviewing for sales, you need to know the same info that a person interviewing for trading does. Sales gets a bad rap on this site, but I have met a lot of sales guys. A lot of the sales guys I know are ex-traders who for one reason or another quit trading to go into sales - and they love it less stress , they know all about the product, and they do just as well as when they were trading. The difference between these interviews is that they will focus on one area more than the other, but that does not mean you should not have a stock pick ready when going into a fixed income interview. Warning: This guide is not meant to be a cram sheet. This guide is meant to be completed over time and to prepare you for the marathon that is the interviewing process.

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. Much like rates trading, FX trading is also a good place to be if you enjoy following macro themes. Generally what moves FX markets are relative differences in macro-economic expectations between countries although you can have geopolitical conflicts, close elections, etc. When I refer to macro-economic expectations, what I really am referring to is interest rate expectations which obviously are informed by other factors like GDP growth , unemployment rates, etc. Interestingly, when I first joined Goldman Sachs as a summer analyst I expected lots of people in my summer analyst class to want to join FX desks for their first rotation. I figured that because FX was obviously a well known asset class - compared to distressed debt or CLOs - that you'd have people flock to what is familiar to them. Instead, the FX desks weren't overly popular. In retrospect, I think this is probably because people worried about "automation", but didn't realize that FX has already been heavily automated. Today if you join a FX desk you'll likely be doing something that simply can't be automated as if it could have been, then it would already have been.

Sales and trading interview questions

One of the largest trading desks within any bank's sales and trading division will be the rates desk, which focuses on government bonds, interest rate swaps, swaptions, inflation-protected securities, etc.. How exactly the rates desk is structured will vary slightly depending on what bank you are looking at. However, what you will generally find are silos of traders who focus on distinct areas of the rates universe. Then you will have sales people who are generally a bit less siloed than the traders meaning they will interact with various trading silos, for instance dealing with clients transacting in numerous kinds of rates products like treasuries and swaps. Occasionally you will see money markets and mortgage-backed securities trading be put under the "rates trading" umbrella.

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Now what do we mean by credit risk? Insider trading is the buying and selling of securities with material non-public information. Maybe mention a growth number you picked up in your reading about the increase in demand for iron ore, whatever. Are there refunds? Creditors lend money at a fixed rate, and inflation cuts into the returns for creditors. There are most certainly some things to avoid saying and some things that need to be included in answers to these questions. However, this largely depends on which desk is in question. No need to read books for interviews, network and then catch up on the news and come up with some solid trade ideas and you're good to go. To give an example, let's use an MBS. Technical Analysis Book.

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.

There will be a basket of year Notes that can be delivered - as obviously new 10yrs are routinely being issued, so there are a number of potential Notes that could be delivered to the seller of the future - and the specific 10yr Note delivered will ultimately be what is called the cheapest to deliver CTD. Working tirelessly and communicating with the client throughout the day, I got the necessary information and conferred with my managers to ensure I stayed on the right track. Munis do have default risk, as illustrated by the unprecedented recent example of Detroit. Stock buybacks can also be used to signal confidence to investors. Judging by the e-book pdf copies that I've skimmed through, there seems to be a substantial overlap of content, however Trading for a Living places greater emphasis on trading psychology and technical analysis , while Come into my Trading Room focuses on position sizing and money management. As a zero coupon bond has no coupon payments, the duration of a zero coupon bond is simply equal to its maturity. Phenomenal post Gekko. As interest rates approach the yield-to-call, the rate of change slows. Fiscal policies involve taxes and government spending, while monetary policies involve interest rate changes, reserve requirement changes, and open market operations. Our Wall Street Mentors program allows you to connect with senior finance professionals, as well receive a recorded Mock Interviews so you can improve your interviewing skills. Both of these answers demonstrate a deep understanding of the nature of these rolls - without you being asked directly about what these roles entail - which is highly impressive to hear in an interview setting. Being straightforward is crucial as it demonstrates how prepared you are.