Quant interview questions
1,322 questions in the style trading and research firms ask, from probability and brainteasers to options, statistics and coding. Every question is open to read; the 50 in the free sample show their worked solutions here.
115 questions · page 1 of 3 · Clear filters
- How many integers from 1 to 100 share no common factor with 100 other than 1?Counting and combinatorics · Applied
- You price by Monte Carlo using antithetic pairs whose payoffs correlate at −0.5.Probability · Advanced
- A strategy’s daily Sharpe ratio is 0.1.Market making · Foundation
- In Kyle’s model, what determines how much the price moves per unit of net order flow?Market making · Advanced
- A crypto perpetual future is trading well above the spot index.Markets and products · Applied
- On 6 May 2010 US equities fell several percent and recovered within minutes.Markets and products · Applied
- You hold $10 million of a bond at par with modified duration 7.Time value, rates and linear products · Applied
- Under what condition are a futures price and a forward price on the same asset identical?Time value, rates and linear products · Advanced
- You receive fixed at 4% on a five-year $100 million swap, struck at market.Time value, rates and linear products · Advanced
- You solve for implied volatility by bisection on the bracket [0.01,2.00] to a…Option pricing models · Applied
- You price an arithmetic Asian option by Monte Carlo. What is the natural control variate?Option pricing models · Advanced
- When is the Bachelier, or normal, model preferred to Black and Scholes?Option pricing models · Advanced
- A binomial tree with 50 steps prices an option $0.04 above the Black and Scholes value.Option pricing models · Advanced
- Your prior on a state is 10 with variance 4, and you observe 13 with…Time series · Applied
- Using EWMA with λ = 0.94, yesterday’s volatility estimate was 1% and today’s return is 2%.Time series · Applied
- A matrix has largest singular value 100 and smallest 0.5. What is its condition number?Linear algebra · Applied
- A symmetric matrix has eigenvalues 10, 6 and 2.Linear algebra · Advanced
- Gradient descent with momentum uses a learning rate of 0.01 and β = 0.9.Machine learning · Applied
- A batch normalisation layer follows a fully connected layer of 128 units.Machine learning · Applied
- What does the kernel trick actually buy you?Machine learning · Advanced
- In Almgren–Chriss optimal execution, what makes the optimal schedule trade…Alpha and signal research · Applied
- A strategy earns 10 bp gross per trade.Alpha and signal research · Advanced
- You are asked to build a five-minute return predictor from order book data.Research case studies · Applied
- You join trades to quotes using the exchange timestamp on both. What can still go wrong?Research case studies · Advanced
- You need the 100 largest values from a stream of 10⁹ numbers you cannot store.Data structures and algorithms · Foundation · Free solution
- How many comparisons does a binary search need, in the worst case, over a…Data structures and algorithms · Foundation
- A balanced binary search tree holds one million keys.Data structures and algorithms · Foundation
- What is the maximum number of edges in a directed acyclic graph on ten vertices?Data structures and algorithms · Foundation
- How many set bits does the integer 90 have?Data structures and algorithms · Foundation
- How many non-empty contiguous subarrays does an array of length ten have?Data structures and algorithms · Foundation
- For a positive integer x, which test is true exactly when x is a power of two?Data structures and algorithms · Foundation
- What does the recurrence T(n) = 2T(n/2)+O(n) solve to?Data structures and algorithms · Applied · Free solution
- A hot-path buffer is a dynamic array with O(1) amortised push.Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- Using an unlimited supply of coins worth 1, 3 and 4, in how many ways can you…Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- When does a hash map lookup degrade to linear time?Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- Your shortest-path graph has some negative edge weights but no negative cycles.Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- How many iterations does the loop while (x) { x &= x - 1; n++; } make on x = 255?Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- What is the edit distance between "kitten" and "sitting"?Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- What most often decides whether a dynamic programming solution is feasible?Data structures and algorithms · Applied
- A dynamic array starts with capacity 1 and doubles when full, copying all elements.Data structures and algorithms · Applied