Derivatives Foundation interview preparation
The full derivatives syllabus from no-arbitrage pricing through the Greeks, the volatility surface, swaps, CDS and clearing, plus the Indian index-options market. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it - we do not invent attributions.
100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them
- Questions
- 100
- Traced to a firm
- 29
- Firms
- 19
- Updated
- September 2026
095Tell me about something that is not on your resume.UBSSales and Trading · New York · 2026
Say this
Pick one real thing you do outside work that you are genuinely good at, and talk about the part of it that reveals how you think. Not a hobby list — one thing, with enough specificity that it could not be anyone else's answer, and a connection to judgement under uncertainty that you do not have to force.
Then walk it
- Choose something with depth rather than breadth. Competitive chess, cooking seriously, running a small resale business, rebuilding motorcycles, playing in a band, coaching a junior team. Depth in one thing beats a list of five.
- Lead with a specific detail rather than a category. 'I have been repairing and reselling film cameras for four years, about 200 of them' tells them something. 'I like photography' tells them nothing.
- Then the part that reveals process. What did you get wrong at first, what did you change, and what is the thing you now know that most people doing it do not? That is the same shape as a good trade review.
- Connect it lightly, once. If the resale business taught you about pricing and inventory risk, say so in one sentence. Do not construct an elaborate metaphor to trading — the forced version is worse than no connection at all.
- Keep it 60 to 90 seconds and leave a hook so they can ask about it. This question exists partly to see whether the interviewer wants to sit next to you for ten hours a day, so being interesting matters more than being impressive.
- And the mistake to avoid: do not use it to smuggle in another achievement. If the answer is 'I taught myself Python and built a backtester', that belongs on the resume, and saying it here suggests you either did not hear the question or have nothing outside work.
Where candidates lose it
Turning it into another achievement story, or listing hobbies. The question is asked to find a person, and the answer that fails is the one that is still selling. Pick one real thing, give a number or a specific detail, and let it be about you rather than about the job.
Expect next
- What did you get wrong when you started?
- What do you know about that which most people don't?
- What do you do when you are not working or studying?
Reported by candidates at UBS (Sales and Trading, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
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.