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. 032You are long a one-month at-the-money straddle at 20 volatility. Under what conditions do you make money?The GreeksHardtechnicalVolatility tradingProp trading firms

   Say this

   If you delta hedge it, you make money when realised volatility over the month exceeds 20. If you do not hedge it, you make money only if the stock finishes far enough from the strike to cover the combined premium, which is a much harder bar. Those are two completely different trades and the distinction is the answer.

   Then walk it

   1. Unhedged: you paid, say, 4.6 percent of spot for the straddle, so the stock must move more than 4.6 percent in either direction by expiry. Direction does not matter, distance does — and crucially, the path does not help you at all.
   2. Hedged: you rebalance delta daily and harvest the moves. Now the path is everything. A stock that oscillates 2 percent a day and finishes flat pays you handsomely while the unhedged straddle expires worthless.
   3. The break-even in the hedged case is the realised-versus-implied comparison. Twenty percent annualised is about 1.25 percent a day. If the stock is genuinely moving more than that, gamma harvesting beats the theta you bleed.
   4. Arithmetic to make it concrete: 20 volatility on a 30-day option costs roughly 20 times root of 30 over 365, about 5.7 percent of spot for the straddle at a 0.8 scaling — call it 4.5 to 5 percent. So you need about a 5 percent move unhedged, or sustained daily moves above 1.25 percent hedged.
   5. Two things can still beat you even if you are right about realised volatility. Implied volatility can fall, which hits your vega mark immediately, and the realised moves can arrive as one gap rather than as daily oscillation — a gap gives you the payoff once rather than repeatedly.
   6. The honest limitation: long gamma is not a free option on chaos. You pay theta every day, and in a market that grinds quietly for three weeks and then explodes on day 25, you may have been stopped out of the position before the payoff arrives. Sizing and horizon matter as much as the volatility view.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering only the unhedged version — 'the stock has to move more than the premium'. Any interviewer on a volatility desk is testing whether you know the hedged straddle is a bet on realised variance and the unhedged one is a bet on the terminal price. Say both, and say which one you meant.

   Expect next

   • What if the stock moves 5 percent but in one overnight gap?
   • You were right about realised volatility and still lost money. How?
   • Would you rather own the straddle or a variance swap for this view?
2. 033What is pin risk, and how do you manage a large position into expiry?The GreeksHardsuperdayMarket makingEquity derivatives

   Say this

   Pin risk is the risk that the underlying closes almost exactly at your strike, so you do not know whether you will be assigned. You go into the weekend not knowing whether you are flat or hugely long or short stock, and by the time you find out, the market has moved. It is a settlement risk, not a pricing risk.

   Then walk it

   1. The mechanism: you are short 1,000 at-the-money calls and the stock settles at the strike. If they are exercised you are short 100,000 shares; if not you are flat. You cannot hedge a position you do not know you have.
   2. Gamma explodes into expiry for at-the-money options, so your delta swings between near zero and near one on tiny price moves. The hedge you put on at 3:29 can be completely wrong at 3:30.
   3. How desks manage it: reduce the at-the-money position before the last hour, close out rather than let it go to assignment, and avoid being short large size at a strike where open interest is concentrated.
   4. Cash settlement solves it. Indian index options — Nifty and Bank Nifty — are cash-settled on a weighted average of the last half hour, so there is no assignment ambiguity. But cash settlement creates a different problem: settlement-price manipulation risk, which is exactly why SEBI moved to a VWAP of the closing period rather than a closing print.
   5. That closing-period mechanic is why you see the volume spike into the last thirty minutes on expiry day in India. Large positions need to hedge against the same average that determines their settlement.
   6. The broader lesson to volunteer: pin risk is one of a family of expiry-day operational risks — assignment, settlement price, and the exercise cut-off being after the market closes so you can be assigned on news that broke post-close. These are the risks that lose money on well-hedged books, and they are the reason expiry-day process discipline exists.

   Where candidates lose it

   Explaining pin risk as a pricing phenomenon. It is an operational and settlement risk, and the answer should include what you do about it — reduce size, close rather than assign, and know whether your contract is cash or physically settled. Naming the Indian cash-settlement mechanic shows local knowledge.

   Expect next

   • How does cash settlement change the problem, and what new problem does it create?
   • Why does volume spike in the last half hour of an Indian expiry day?
   • You are assigned on news that broke after the close. What is your exposure?
3. 034Beyond the five standard Greeks, which second-order sensitivities actually get managed?The GreeksHardsuperdayExotics tradingVolatility trading

   Say this

   Vanna and volga, mainly. Vanna is how delta changes when volatility moves, and it is the same thing as how vega changes when spot moves. Volga is the convexity of vega in volatility. On any book with skew — which is every real book — those two determine whether your vega hedge holds up.

   Then walk it

   1. Vanna matters because implied volatility and spot are correlated. In equities the correlation is strongly negative: spot falls, volatility rises. So a position with vanna gets a second hit at exactly the moment the first one arrives, and the two are not independent risks.
   2. Volga is the reason a vega-neutral book is not volatility-neutral for large moves. Wing options have positive volga, so a long-wings, short-body position is vega-flat and still profits from a volatility spike. Every risk reversal and butterfly carries it.
   3. Charm is the decay of delta with time, and it matters near expiry and on barrier books, where your delta changes overnight without the market moving at all.
   4. The FX market prices in these terms directly. The vanna-volga approach prices an exotic by taking the Black-Scholes value and adding the cost of hedging its vanna and volga with the market-quoted risk reversal and butterfly. It is not elegant, but it reproduces market prices better than a naive smile interpolation.
   5. How desks actually manage it: a risk report showing profit and loss under a grid of spot and volatility shocks, rather than a list of Greeks. The grid captures vanna and volga implicitly and does not require you to trust a Taylor expansion.
   6. And the limitation: these are still local derivatives. A scenario grid with a minus 20 percent spot and plus 30 volatility shock tells you more than any second-order Greek, because in a real dislocation the correlations you assumed break and the higher-order terms are no longer small.

   Where candidates lose it

   Rattling off exotic Greek names without connecting them to spot-volatility correlation. Vanna matters in equities specifically because the skew is one-sided and spot and volatility are negatively correlated. If you cannot say that, the names are decoration.

   Expect next

   • Why is vanna so important in equities specifically?
   • How can a vega-neutral book still profit from a volatility spike?
   • Would you rather have a Greek report or a scenario grid, and why?

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.