Sales and trading interview questions

The key to acing a sales and trading interview is preparation—and beginning your preparation as soon as possible.

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.

Sales and trading interview questions

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. The reason for the course being so large is that I believed a truly comprehensive course needed to cover not only the interview questions you need to prepare for in a sales and trading interview and there are a lot of them! That latter point is important. Sales and trading can seem like a complete black box to someone from the outside and what I set out to do is try to shed a little light on sales and trading and help you get your foot in the door. The reality is that sales and trading is really just the name of a division of an investment bank that houses dozens of wildly different desks.

To answer this question, you need to consider yield volatility. We respect your privacy.

He has extensive experience in wealth management, investments and portfolio management. As a result, traders and sellers frequently work together and interact with clients to address their needs. For instance, they check if orders are processed and identify the best investment approaches for higher return and profitability. Salespeople usually directly communicate with their clients to understand their objectives. Then, they devise plausible and fitting trade ideas, market updates, and investment approaches, which the trader executes while minimizing price impact. Moreover, sales and trading require excellent communication and social skills.

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:. The themes are thinking quickly , mitigating risk , performing well under pressure , and generating profits. Tell me about a recent news story related to the financial markets and your opinion of it.

Sales and trading interview questions

This is especially true of the superday interviews where your three interviewers could come from any desk within Goldman's global markets division and ask wildly different interview questions. Part of the reason why I created the Sales and Trading Interview series of guides is because there is so little information out there on not only the interview questions to expect, but what all the desks that are housed within the sales and trading division actually do. What Goldman really wants to do - and I speak from personal experience having got a sales and trading summer analyst offer there - is make sure that you really know what you're getting into. That means you need to demonstrate in an interview that you have contextual understanding of what various desks in the sales and trading division - or as Goldman calls it, the Global Markets division - practically do so you aren't flying blind when you begin.

Joseph rosembau

The money markets short term interest rates guide contains 28 questions and answers. Can you give me a simple example with numbers of how delta hedging works? Be sure to stay in touch! Who buys municipal bonds and why? What I prefer to do is encourage everyone to give this post a 5 Banana Rating so that it works its way up the Top Ranked Content. In other words, you need contextual understanding. The equity derivatives desk of a major sell-side investment bank - like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs - are not dealing with retail order floor. If you only have 30 minutes of free time a day and can only get your information from one source, read the front cover of the WSJ, the front page of The Marketplace section, and the Money and Investing section. What are the differences between mortgage-backed security and treasury bonds? Not only prior to your interviews, but also on the job. Sales gets a bad rap on this site, but I have met a lot of sales guys. The company also has a very experienced executive team with years of previous leadership experience running mid to large-scale Fortune companies. 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. Tricky question.

The key to acing a sales and trading interview is preparation—and beginning your preparation as soon as possible.

Try to justify your initial portfolio recommendation succinctly and articulately. These interview questions are what likely you'd expect: walk me through your resume, why sales and trading, etc. Take a look at all the potential mistakes in our HireVue interview guide and watch for each one as you review the footage. How is this course delivered? When you get these questions you shouldn't be daunted; if you're being asked them it's because your interviewer is impressed by you thus far. By breaking down the types of questions that can be asked into the five buckets mentioned at the beginning of this article you'll be able to quickly figure develop answers to the most common questions. Other APAC. How should we think about them? Another excellent resource for brain teaser questions is Heard on the Street. I also just like writing about all of this, so this has been a lot of fun to put together. You will not get an offer if you fail the fit questions , but having a strong technical knowledge can be a huge help also and he push you that extra inch ahead of the other guy. Gekko - awesome post, thanks again for taking the time to help everyone out. For salespeople, the important thing is that you love to sell.