Equity Research interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

72

Firms

45

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsMorningstar12Man Group6Balyasny Asset Management5BLBlackRock5FTFranklin Templeton5MSCI5Jefferies4CSCredit Suisse3Fidelity Investments3Moody's3Perella Weinberg Partners3Point723S&P Global3The Vanguard Group3WMWellington Management3Advent International2Apollo Global Management2Bank of America2Carlyle Group2DED.E. Shaw2Houlihan Lokey2HSBC2Piper Sandler2Sequoia Capital2SSState Street2Viking Global Investors2WBWilliam Blair2ACAQR Capital Management1BGBaupost Group1BMBNY Mellon1Centerview Partners1Coatue Management1Goldman Sachs1GSGuggenheim Securities1HWHarris Williams1Insight Partners1Invesco1Mizuho1Moelis & Company1MSMorgan Stanley1PIMCO1SCSchroders1Scotiabank1T. Rowe Price1TSTruist Securities1

Topic

All topicsResearch process9Stock pitch6Company analysis8Investment philosophy5Valuation14Modelling2Portfolio and risk8Macro8Sector knowledge2Accounting8Career and fit12Industry knowledge6Quantitative research1Sector: technology3Sector: consumer1Sector: healthcare1Sector: energy1Sector: financials2Sector: industrials1Case and estimation2

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyTechnicalCaseFitBrainteaserMarket view

1. 063Which equities have duration?MacroHardtechnicalBLBlackRockRisk and Quantitative Analysis · New York · 2026

   Say this

   Any equity whose cash flows sit far in the future. High-growth companies with earnings expected years out behave like long bonds, while stable high-yielding mature businesses are shorter duration.

   Then walk it

   1. Duration in equities means the weighted average time to the cash flows. A company earning little today and a lot in a decade has most of its value in distant cash flows, so its value is highly sensitive to the discount rate.
   2. So unprofitable high-growth technology is the longest-duration equity there is, which is why it falls hardest when yields rise.
   3. Conversely, a mature high-dividend business returns cash now, so its duration is shorter and it is less rate-sensitive on the discount channel, though it may compete with bonds for income investors.
   4. Utilities and infrastructure are an interesting case: long contracted cash flows make them long duration, and heavy leverage adds a second rate exposure. They behave like bond proxies.
   5. Value stocks are generally shorter duration than growth, which is a large part of why the value-growth relative performance tracks real yields so closely.
   6. The practical implication for a portfolio: equity duration is a factor exposure you can measure and hedge, and on a risk platform it will be monitored explicitly rather than left implicit.

   Where candidates lose it

   Treating duration as purely a fixed income concept. The question is testing whether you can transfer it. Naming the value-growth spread as a duration trade is the answer that shows real fluency.

   Expect next

   • How would you measure it?
   • Why does value outperform when real yields rise?
   • How would you hedge equity duration?

   Reported by candidates at BlackRock (Risk and Quantitative Analysis, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

2. 068What is the difference between alpha and beta, and why does it matter to an employer?Portfolio and riskCoretechnicalHWHarris WilliamsInvestment Banking · Los Angeles · 2025BLBlackRockRisk and Quantitative Analysis · New York · 2026

   Say this

   Beta is the return you get from market exposure, which anyone can buy cheaply. Alpha is the return above what that exposure explains. It matters because clients will not pay active fees for something an index fund delivers.

   Then walk it

   1. Formally, regress portfolio returns on market returns. The slope is beta, the intercept is alpha.
   2. Beta is commoditised. An index fund delivers it for a few basis points, so a manager charging 1 percent for closet-index beta is destroying value for the client.
   3. Alpha is the residual and it is scarce. The difficulty is that much apparent alpha turns out to be exposure to a factor that was not in the simple model, which is why multi-factor attribution matters.
   4. The industry consequence is the shift to passive and the barbell: cheap beta at one end, genuinely differentiated high-conviction or alternative strategies at the other, with the middle being squeezed out.
   5. For a multi-manager platform the framing goes further: the platform wants pure idiosyncratic alpha and hedges out the factor exposure centrally, which is exactly why analysts there are asked about hedging and factor neutrality.
   6. So the practical answer to 'why does it matter' is that your job is to produce the part that cannot be bought for four basis points.

   Where candidates lose it

   Defining the terms without the commercial implication. The reason this gets asked is the fee model of the entire industry, and connecting it to why active management is under pressure is what makes the answer land.

   Expect next

   • How much apparent alpha is really factor exposure?
   • Why has money moved to passive?
   • How does a multi-manager platform think about this?

   Reported by candidates at Harris Williams (Investment Banking, Los Angeles, 2025); BlackRock (Risk and Quantitative Analysis, 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.