Derivatives Foundation interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

29

Firms

19

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsMSMorgan Stanley4Nomura4Akuna Capital2Amundi2HSBC2PIMCO2Bank of America1Barclays1Citadel1DRW1Goldman Sachs1Jane Street1Millennium Management1Mizuho1Old Mission Capital1RCRBC Capital Markets1Scotiabank1UBS1Wells Fargo Securities1

Topic

All topicsForwards and futures10Options basics8Option pricing7The Greeks10Volatility7Option strategies9Swaps and rates7Credit derivatives4Market structure and clearing6Indian derivatives8Trading and markets9Brainteasers6Fit9

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyTechnicalCaseMarket viewBrainteaserFit

1. 001What is the difference between a forward and a future?Forwards and futuresCorephone / first roundSell-side sales and trading

   Say this

   Economically they are the same trade: an agreement today to transact at a fixed price on a future date. The differences are all plumbing, and the plumbing changes the risk. A future is exchange-traded, standardised and margined daily through a clearing house; a forward is a bilateral OTC contract with no daily cash movement and live counterparty risk.

   Then walk it

   1. Standardisation: a future has a fixed contract size, fixed delivery dates and a fixed deliverable grade. A forward is whatever the two parties write down, which is why corporates use forwards to hedge an exact exposure.
   2. Credit: the future faces a central counterparty, so your credit exposure is to the clearing house and it is collateralised every day. A forward leaves you exposed to the other side for the whole life of the trade.
   3. Cash flow: a future is marked to market daily and variation margin moves in cash, so your profit and loss is realised as you go. A forward settles once, at maturity.
   4. Liquidity: you close a future by trading out of it on the exchange. You close a forward by negotiating an unwind with the same counterparty, or by writing an offsetting trade and carrying both.
   5. The one real pricing difference falls out of the daily cash flows. Because margin is paid and received at whatever the short rate is, a future and a forward on the same asset only have identical fair prices if rates are deterministic.
   6. In practice the daily margin is the point. A hedge that is economically perfect can still kill you if the variation margin calls arrive before the offsetting gain does, which is what happened to Metallgesellschaft.

   Where candidates lose it

   Listing exchange-traded versus OTC and stopping there. The interviewer wants you to connect the plumbing to a risk: daily margin turns a paper loss into a cash call, and that liquidity risk is the reason the distinction matters on a desk.

   Expect next

   • So is the fair forward price ever different from the fair futures price?
   • Which would a corporate treasurer prefer for hedging a dollar payable, and why?
   • What happens to your hedge if you get margin-called and cannot fund it?
2. 002Price a one-year forward on a non-dividend-paying stock trading at 100, with rates at 5 percent. Show me why it has to be that number.Forwards and futuresCoretechnicalProp trading firms

   Say this

   105, or 105.13 if you compound continuously. The forward price is the spot price grown at the risk-free rate, and the reason is not a model — it is that any other number lets me build a portfolio that makes money with no risk and no capital.

   Then walk it

   1. The replication: borrow 100 at 5 percent, buy the stock today, hold it for a year. At maturity I own the stock and owe 105. So locking in delivery at 105 costs me nothing today.
   2. If the forward traded at 110, I do exactly that trade and simultaneously sell the forward at 110. In a year I deliver the stock, collect 110, repay 105, and keep 5 with zero risk and zero net investment. Everyone would do it until the price fell back.
   3. If the forward traded at 100, I reverse it: short the stock, invest the 100 at 5 percent, buy the forward. A year later I have 105, pay 100 for the stock, return the borrow, keep 5.
   4. So F equals S times e to the rt, or S times one plus r for annual compounding. Nothing about expected returns, volatility or the stock's beta enters it.
   5. Add dividends and they subtract, because holding the stock pays you something the forward does not: F equals S times e to the r minus q times t. On a commodity, storage cost adds and convenience yield subtracts.
   6. The honest caveat: the arbitrage assumes I can borrow at the risk-free rate, short freely and hold to maturity with no margin. In practice the borrow cost on a hard-to-short name, or a wide repo spread, opens a band around the theoretical price inside which no arbitrage is available.

   Where candidates lose it

   Reaching for expected stock returns. Candidates feel that a forward on a high-beta stock should be priced higher. It is not, because the forward is replicated by holding the stock itself, so the risk premium is already inside the spot price. Say the replication out loud before you say the formula.

   Expect next

   • Now add a 2 percent dividend yield.
   • What if you cannot borrow the stock to short it?
   • Does the answer change if I tell you the stock has a beta of 2?
3. 003What is cost of carry, and what do contango and backwardation tell you?Forwards and futuresCoretechnicalCommodities trading

   Say this

   Cost of carry is everything it costs or pays you to hold the physical asset instead of the forward: financing, plus storage and insurance, minus any yield you earn by owning it. Contango is when futures trade above spot, which is the normal state when carry is positive. Backwardation is futures below spot, and it tells you the market is short of the physical right now.

   Then walk it

   1. The identity: futures equals spot, plus financing, plus storage, minus convenience yield. Contango means financing and storage dominate. Backwardation means convenience yield dominates.
   2. Convenience yield is the value of having the barrel or the bushel in your hand. A refinery that runs out of crude stops; a refinery holding inventory does not. That option has value and it shows up as a negative carry term.
   3. So backwardation is a scarcity signal. It is the physical market saying it will pay a premium for delivery now rather than in three months, which is exactly what you see during a supply shock.
   4. Financial assets are almost always in contango, because there is no convenience yield in owning an index and storage is free. Equity index futures trade above spot by financing less dividends.
   5. The trading consequence is roll yield. A long position in a contango market sells the cheap near contract and buys the expensive far one every month, so you bleed. In backwardation, rolling pays you. This is why long commodity index products underperformed spot through most of the 2010s.
   6. The limit of the framework: you can arbitrage contango wider than full carry by buying spot and storing, but you cannot arbitrage backwardation, because you cannot borrow a barrel of oil that does not exist. That asymmetry is why backwardation can go to extremes and contango cannot.

   Where candidates lose it

   Defining contango and backwardation as shapes on a chart without naming convenience yield or roll yield. The two follow-ups are always 'why can't you arbitrage backwardation' and 'what does that do to a long ETF holder'. Have both ready.

   Expect next

   • Why can you arbitrage a contango that is too steep but not a backwardation?
   • What does the curve shape do to a long commodity ETF's return versus spot?
   • Crude went to a negative price in April 2020. How does that fit your framework?
4. 004Explain initial margin, variation margin and mark-to-market on a futures position.Forwards and futuresCoretechnicalClearing and risk

   Say this

   Initial margin is the good-faith deposit you post before you trade, sized to cover a bad one- or two-day move. Variation margin is the daily cash settlement of your profit and loss. Mark-to-market is the process that computes it: every evening the clearing house revalues your position at the settlement price and moves cash between accounts.

   Then walk it

   1. Initial margin is a risk number, not a price. Exchanges set it from a volatility model — SPAN or a value-at-risk approach — so it rises when the market gets wild, usually at the worst moment for the people holding losing positions.
   2. Variation margin is real cash, paid daily, and it is a settlement rather than collateral. Your loss leaves your account permanently; you do not get it back when the position recovers, you get it back through the next day's gain.
   3. Maintenance margin is the floor. Fall below it and you get a margin call to top back up to initial, and if you do not meet it the broker closes you out. The close-out is not discretionary and it does not wait for your view to be right.
   4. Worked example: one Nifty futures lot at 25,000 with a lot size of 25 is about 6.25 lakh of notional. At roughly 12 percent margin you post about 75,000. A 1 percent adverse move is 6,250 of variation margin, so 8 percent of your posted margin gone in a day on a 1 percent move.
   5. That leverage is the whole point of the question. Futures let you carry ten times your cash, which means a move that is trivial to a cash investor is existential to a futures position.
   6. The risk to name: this is a liquidity mechanism as much as a credit one. A hedger who is economically flat can still be forced out because the margin on the futures leg is cash today while the gain on the physical leg is months away.

   Where candidates lose it

   Calling variation margin collateral. It is a daily settlement of profit and loss, which is why futures have no accumulated credit exposure and forwards do. Also, give a number. An answer with no arithmetic reads as read rather than done.

   Expect next

   • What is the difference between variation margin and collateral posted under a CSA?
   • Why does initial margin rise exactly when you can least afford it?
   • How did the margin mechanism cause the nickel squeeze on the LME in 2022?
5. 005What is basis risk, and when does it hurt a hedger most?Forwards and futuresIntermediatetechnicalCorporate treasury

   Say this

   Basis is spot minus futures. Basis risk is the risk that the two do not move together, so your hedge does not offset your exposure one for one. It bites hardest when the thing you are hedging is not the thing the contract is written on, or when your exposure and the contract mature on different dates.

   Then walk it

   1. Three sources. Asset mismatch, where you hedge jet fuel with crude futures. Maturity mismatch, where your exposure runs to March and the liquid contract expires in February. And location or grade mismatch, where your physical sits in a different delivery point.
   2. At expiry basis goes to zero for the matched asset, because delivery forces convergence. Away from expiry it wanders, so a hedge you intend to lift early carries basis risk even on a perfect asset match.
   3. The cross-hedge version is the dangerous one. Jet fuel and crude are usually 90 percent correlated, which sounds fine until a refining margin shock breaks the relationship precisely during the event you were hedging.
   4. A hedge does not eliminate risk, it swaps price risk for basis risk. You do it because basis is normally an order of magnitude less volatile than outright price, not because it is zero.
   5. Numbers make it concrete. Hedging a 10 million dollar Indian mid-cap book with Nifty futures might cut your volatility from 22 percent to 12, not to zero, because the beta is unstable and the residual is idiosyncratic. You have to be honest that the hedge is partial.
   6. The rolling version compounds it. If your exposure is five years and the liquid contract is three months, you roll twenty times and each roll happens at whatever basis the market offers you that day. That is stack-and-roll risk, and it is what broke Metallgesellschaft's oil hedge.

   Where candidates lose it

   Saying basis risk means the hedge is imperfect, without naming a source. Name asset, maturity and location mismatch, and give one live example where the correlation broke during the stress you were hedging. That is the answer a desk recognises.

   Expect next

   • How would you decide between a cross-hedge and no hedge at all?
   • What is stack-and-roll risk?
   • Your hedge ratio was estimated on three years of data. Why might it be wrong tomorrow?
6. 006You run a 50 million dollar equity portfolio with a beta of 1.2. Index futures are at 5,000 with a 50 dollar multiplier. Hedge it, and tell me what you are left with.Forwards and futuresHardtechnicalEquity derivativesAsset management

   Say this

   Short 240 contracts. One contract is 5,000 times 50, so 250,000 dollars of notional. You need beta times portfolio value of index exposure, which is 1.2 times 50 million, or 60 million, and 60 million divided by 250,000 is 240. What you are left with is the alpha, plus basis risk, plus the fact that beta is an estimate.

   Then walk it

   1. Contract notional first: 5,000 index points times the 50 dollar multiplier is 250,000 dollars per contract. Always state this before dividing, because it is where candidates drop a factor.
   2. Number of contracts equals beta times portfolio value over contract notional. 1.2 times 50 million is 60 million of index-equivalent exposure; divided by 250,000 that is 240 contracts, sold.
   3. Check the hedge does what you want. If the index falls 10 percent, your book falls about 6 million on a 1.2 beta, and the short 240 contracts gain 60 million times 10 percent, which is 6 million. Flat, by construction.
   4. The minimum-variance version is more honest than beta from a regression on the wrong window: h equals the correlation times the ratio of the standard deviations, which is the same thing as the slope of portfolio returns on futures returns. Estimate it on the horizon you actually intend to hedge.
   5. What remains: idiosyncratic return, which is the point if you think you can pick stocks. Plus basis risk between the futures and the cash index, dividend risk in the futures basis, and the cash drag of posting margin.
   6. And beta drifts. It is unstable across regimes and it rises in crashes, so the hedge that looks right in calm markets under-hedges in the event you bought it for. I would re-estimate and adjust rather than set it once.

   Where candidates lose it

   Forgetting the multiplier, or hedging notional rather than beta-adjusted notional. On a 1.2 beta portfolio, hedging 50 million instead of 60 leaves you a fifth under-hedged. Say the two-step — beta-adjust, then divide by contract notional — out loud so the interviewer can follow.

   Expect next

   • Would you use futures or buy puts, and how would you choose?
   • Your beta was estimated over three years. What if the market regime just changed?
   • What is left in the portfolio after the hedge, and is that what you wanted?
7. 007A refiner wants to hedge crude purchases for the next three years but only the front months are liquid. What do you do, and what could go wrong?Forwards and futuresHardcase studyCommodities tradingCorporate treasury

   Say this

   Stack the whole exposure in the liquid front contracts and roll it forward each month, or use a smaller strip out the curve and accept a partial hedge. Either way the thing that kills you is not price — it is the funding of variation margin on a position that is economically flat.

   Then walk it

   1. The stack-and-roll: put on the full three years of notional in the front two contracts, then roll month by month. You get liquidity and a tight bid-offer, but you take the roll basis twenty-plus times.
   2. The strip alternative: sell what you can in each maturity out to three years, accepting wide spreads and a smaller hedge ratio. Less basis risk, more transaction cost, and possibly no liquidity at all beyond eighteen months.
   3. The funding problem is the real answer. Your futures leg settles in cash daily. Your physical purchases happen over three years. If crude rallies, you fund margin calls today against a benefit that arrives in 2029.
   4. This is exactly what sank Metallgesellschaft in 1993. The hedges were economically sound, but the position was stacked in the front, the curve went from backwardation to contango, and the margin calls ran to over a billion dollars. They closed the hedges near the bottom.
   5. So the practical structure: size the stack to what you can fund under a stress scenario, arrange a committed credit line specifically for margin, and pre-agree with the board what a mark-to-market loss on a hedge means, so nobody panics at the wrong moment.
   6. I would also swap some of it into an OTC commodity swap with a bank. You give up the clearing-house credit protection and pay a wider spread, but the collateral terms are negotiable under a CSA, which is precisely the problem you are trying to solve.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering only with the mechanics of stacking and rolling. The interviewer is fishing for the funding-liquidity failure — a perfect hedge that gets closed out because of a cash call. Name Metallgesellschaft or an equivalent, and say how you would size the position to survive it.

   Expect next

   • How would you size the position so a margin call cannot force you out?
   • Would you rather hedge with an OTC swap? What do you give up?
   • How do you explain a 200 million mark-to-market loss on a hedge to a CFO?
8. 008Is a futures price a forecast of where spot will be?Forwards and futuresHardtechnicalCommodities tradingProp trading firms

   Say this

   No. A futures price is the spot price plus carry, set by arbitrage. It only equals the expected future spot price if the asset carries no risk premium, which is rarely true. Confusing the two is how people talk themselves into thinking a contango curve is a bullish forecast.

   Then walk it

   1. For a storable financial asset, the futures price is pinned by replication. It contains no view at all: spot times the carry factor, and nothing else fits without an arbitrage.
   2. The expected spot price is a different object. It equals the futures price plus whatever risk premium hedgers are paying to lay off the risk. Keynes called the version where futures sit below expected spot normal backwardation.
   3. So the curve tells you about carry and inventory, not direction. A steep contango in oil says storage is full and financing is expensive; it is not the market predicting a rally.
   4. Empirically the futures curve is a poor forecaster, and that is exactly what makes carry strategies work. If futures were unbiased forecasts, there would be no systematic return to being long backwardated markets and short contango ones.
   5. Where the distinction bites in practice: a long commodity index investor in a 10 percent annualised contango loses roughly that much to roll before spot has moved at all. People buy the index expecting spot exposure and get spot minus carry.
   6. The caveat: for a non-storable like electricity, or for VIX futures where there is no arbitrage to hold the underlying, the curve does carry genuine expectational content, because replication is impossible and the price is set by supply and demand for the risk.

   Where candidates lose it

   Saying yes because the curve is upward-sloping and that must mean the market expects higher prices. It is the single most common misread of a futures curve. Lead with no, give the replication argument, then concede where the curve does contain a forecast.

   Expect next

   • So why do carry strategies earn a return?
   • Where does the curve genuinely contain expectations rather than carry?
   • What does a steep VIX contango tell you, and how do short-vol products harvest it?
9. 009When is a futures price different from a forward price on the same asset?Forwards and futuresHardtechnicalRates derivativesProp trading firms

   Say this

   When interest rates are random and correlated with the asset. The daily margin on a future means your gains get reinvested and your losses get funded at the prevailing short rate, so the correlation between the asset and rates has value. Positive correlation makes the future worth more than the forward; negative correlation the reverse.

   Then walk it

   1. With deterministic rates the two prices are identical. The proof is a replication where you scale the futures position by the discount factor each day, which is only possible if you know that factor in advance.
   2. Introduce stochastic rates and the asymmetry appears. If the asset tends to rise when rates rise, a long future receives variation margin exactly when it can be reinvested at a high rate, and pays it when funding is cheap. That is worth something, so the futures price sits above the forward.
   3. Negative correlation flips it, which is why this matters most in fixed income: bond prices fall when rates rise, so the correlation is strongly negative and the gap is real rather than theoretical.
   4. The size depends on the correlation, the volatility of rates and the maturity. On a three-month contract it is a rounding error. On a long-dated Eurodollar or SOFR strip it is material enough to have its own name: the convexity adjustment.
   5. That adjustment is why you cannot read a swap curve straight off futures. A futures strip needs a convexity correction before it gives you the forward rates a swap is priced off, and in the 1990s misunderstanding this was a genuine source of losses.
   6. Second-order effects also drive a wedge: the future is collateralised and the forward may not be, so the forward carries a credit and funding charge — CVA and FVA — that has nothing to do with rates at all.

   Where candidates lose it

   Saying the two are always equal because the textbook proof says so. The proof assumes deterministic rates and the interviewer knows it. Name the convexity adjustment and say where it is large enough to matter, which is long-dated rates.

   Expect next

   • Which way does the convexity adjustment go for a Eurodollar future, and why?
   • Why can you not read forward rates directly off a futures strip?
   • How do collateral and funding costs drive a separate wedge between the two?
10. 010In April 2020 WTI settled at minus 37 dollars. How can a price be negative, and how does that break the models?Forwards and futuresHardsuperdayCommodities tradingClearing and risk

    Say this

    Because WTI is physically delivered at Cushing, and if every tank is full, taking delivery costs you money. A negative price is just storage scarcity expressed as a price: holders were paying to not receive barrels they had nowhere to put. It broke two things — models that assume lognormal prices, and margin systems built on percentage moves.

    Then walk it

    1. Mechanics first: the May contract required physical delivery at Cushing. Demand had collapsed, storage was effectively sold out, and long holders facing delivery with no tank had to pay someone to take the contract.
    2. So convenience yield went sharply negative. The carry identity still holds — it is the storage term that exploded, because the marginal unit of storage was unobtainable at any price.
    3. The modelling failure: lognormal price dynamics, which is what Black-Scholes and most commodity option models assume, put zero probability on a negative price. Every option model on the screen was undefined the moment the price crossed zero.
    4. The industry response was to shift crude options to the Bachelier model, where prices are normally distributed and can go negative, and to quote volatility in dollars rather than percent. Rates desks had already done this when European yields went negative in 2015.
    5. The clearing consequence was worse. Margin models scaled to percentage moves cannot size risk on a price near zero, and several brokers had systems that could not even represent a negative price. Retail products tracking the front contract — including a large Chinese bank's oil product — took catastrophic losses.
    6. The lesson I would draw is about the delivery mechanism rather than oil. A financially settled contract on the same underlying did not go negative in the same way. Physical delivery is what converts a full tank into a price, and any contract with physical settlement can do this.

    Where candidates lose it

    Treating it as a freak event with no lesson. The point is that the model assumption — prices cannot be negative — was an assumption, not a fact, and it was load-bearing in every option pricer and margin system. Name the switch from lognormal to Bachelier.

    Expect next

    • How do you price an option when the underlying can be negative?
    • Why did the financially settled contract behave differently?
    • What should a clearing house change after an event like that?

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.