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Quantitative Trading Research Analyst Interview Questions

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110 quantitative trading research analyst interview questions shared by candidates

You're throwing a party in 24 hours and have purchased 1,000 bottles of wine. You are informed that one of these 1,000 bottles is tainted with a slow-acting poison that will kill the consumer 24 hours after intake. You have 10 rats that you can use to taste the wine. How many bottles will you be able to ensure are not poisoned by the time the party begins?
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Summer Quantitative Trading Internship

Interviewed at Old Mission

4.2★
Dec 2, 2013

You're throwing a party in 24 hours and have purchased 1,000 bottles of wine. You are informed that one of these 1,000 bottles is tainted with a slow-acting poison that will kill the consumer 24 hours after intake. You have 10 rats that you can use to taste the wine. How many bottles will you be able to ensure are not poisoned by the time the party begins?

Home assignment: OANDA operates a trading platform which allows clients to buy and sell currency pairs. When a client makes a trade to buy or a sell a currency pair, the company must decide to either (a) offset the exposure immediately by hedging the trade with a bank, or (b) hold the exposure for a period of time allowing the market to move before hedging the trade. If the company hedges the trade immediately, they will realize a small profit for each trade. If they hold the exposure, then they may realize a large profit or loss, depending if the market moves with or against the exposure. You are tasked with determining (for each client trade) whether we should hedge the trade immediately or should hold on to the exposure for a period of time. Describe how you would perform this analysis, including what data, tools, or processes you would use. State your assumptions. Comment from HR: The trading team is not looking for an exact solution, more to see your understanding of the problem, and for a proposal about how one would go about finding a solution to the problem. No formulas are required.
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Quantitative Trading Analyst

Interviewed at OANDA

3.5★
Jul 5, 2017

Home assignment: OANDA operates a trading platform which allows clients to buy and sell currency pairs. When a client makes a trade to buy or a sell a currency pair, the company must decide to either (a) offset the exposure immediately by hedging the trade with a bank, or (b) hold the exposure for a period of time allowing the market to move before hedging the trade. If the company hedges the trade immediately, they will realize a small profit for each trade. If they hold the exposure, then they may realize a large profit or loss, depending if the market moves with or against the exposure. You are tasked with determining (for each client trade) whether we should hedge the trade immediately or should hold on to the exposure for a period of time. Describe how you would perform this analysis, including what data, tools, or processes you would use. State your assumptions. Comment from HR: The trading team is not looking for an exact solution, more to see your understanding of the problem, and for a proposal about how one would go about finding a solution to the problem. No formulas are required.

first question - let's play a game where you have ten chips, and you want to split them up into stacks such that you want to maximize your score, which is the product of the size of each stack. what's the best you can do with 10? what about 100 chips? what about N chips arbitrarily large?
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Quantitative Trading Intern

Interviewed at Jane Street

4.4★
Feb 13, 2024

first question - let's play a game where you have ten chips, and you want to split them up into stacks such that you want to maximize your score, which is the product of the size of each stack. what's the best you can do with 10? what about 100 chips? what about N chips arbitrarily large?

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