Equity Research interview preparation
Sell side and buy side. 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. Answers lead with the point, then the mechanism, then the limitation.
100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them
- Questions
- 100
- Traced to a firm
- 72
- Firms
- 45
- Updated
- September 2026
065How would you allocate a $100 million mandate across a portfolio of funds?MSCIRisk Management · Remote · 2013The Vanguard GroupInvestment Research · Malvern · 2024
Say this
Start from the objective and the constraints, not from the funds. Required return, risk tolerance, liquidity needs, time horizon and any restrictions. Then build the strategic asset allocation, then select managers within it.
Then walk it
- Establish the mandate first: what return is required, over what horizon, with what drawdown tolerance, what liquidity is needed and what restrictions apply. Everything follows from these.
- Set the strategic asset allocation across asset classes. That decision drives the large majority of the variance in outcomes; manager selection is second-order.
- Then decide active versus passive by asset class. Use passive where markets are efficient and active where dispersion is high and there is evidence of persistent skill.
- Then select managers on process rather than past returns. Understand the source of the edge, whether the team is stable, whether assets have grown beyond the capacity of the strategy, and what the fee structure does to net returns.
- Then look at the combination rather than each fund alone. Correlation between managers is what determines portfolio risk, and three managers running the same factor exposure is one position with three fee loads.
- Then build in the governance: rebalancing rules, review triggers, and a plan for what would cause redemption. Deciding the sell criteria in advance is what prevents performance-chasing.
Where candidates lose it
Jumping straight to picking funds. The correct structure is objectives, then asset allocation, then managers, then monitoring. Also, ignoring correlation between managers, which is the most common real-world error in multi-manager portfolios.
Expect next
- What risk-return targets would you set for an institutional investor?
- How do you judge whether a manager has skill or luck?
- How would you build a portfolio for different client needs?
Reported by candidates at MSCI (Risk Management, Remote, 2013); The Vanguard Group (Investment Research, Malvern, 2024). 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.