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.

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100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
72
Firms
45
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsMorningstar12Man Group6Balyasny Asset Management5BlackRock5Franklin Templeton5MSCI5Jefferies4Credit Suisse3Fidelity Investments3Moody's3Perella Weinberg Partners3Point723S&P Global3The Vanguard Group3Wellington Management3Advent International2Apollo Global Management2Bank of America2Carlyle Group2D.E. Shaw2Houlihan Lokey2HSBC2Piper Sandler2Sequoia Capital2State Street2Viking Global Investors2William Blair2AQR Capital Management1Baupost Group1BNY Mellon1Centerview Partners1Coatue Management1Goldman Sachs1Guggenheim Securities1Harris Williams1Insight Partners1Invesco1Mizuho1Moelis & Company1Morgan Stanley1PIMCO1Schroders1Scotiabank1T. Rowe Price1Truist Securities1
Topic
All topicsResearch process9Stock pitch6Company analysis8Investment philosophy5Valuation14Modelling2Portfolio and risk8Macro8Sector knowledge2Accounting8Career and fit12Industry knowledge6Quantitative research1Sector: technology3Sector: consumer1Sector: healthcare1Sector: energy1Sector: financials2Sector: industrials1Case and estimation2
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Type
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  1. 012What is the yield curve, what does it mean when it inverts, and why do people treat that as a recession indicator?MacroIntermediatetechnicalState StreetEquity Research · Boston · 2020

    Say this

    It plots government bond yields against maturity. Normally it slopes upward because investors demand more for lending longer. An inversion means short rates exceed long rates, which says the market expects the central bank to be cutting in future.

    Then walk it

    1. The normal upward slope comes from term premium and from expected growth and inflation.
    2. An inversion means the market expects policy rates to be lower in two years than today. Rates get cut when growth is weak, so an inversion is a forecast of weakness rather than a cause of it.
    3. The track record is why people watch it: in the US, a sustained 2s10s or 3m10y inversion has preceded every recession since the 1960s, usually by 12 to 18 months.
    4. There is also a causal channel, not just a signal. Banks borrow short and lend long, so an inverted curve compresses net interest margin and reduces the incentive to extend credit. Tighter credit slows the economy.
    5. The honest caveats: it has produced false positives, the lead time is long and variable, and quantitative easing distorted the term premium enough that the signal may be weaker than history suggests. An analyst who names that is more credible than one who treats it as a law.

    Where candidates lose it

    Describing the shape without explaining the mechanism, or treating the indicator as infallible. Both the expectations channel and the bank lending channel should appear, along with at least one reason to doubt it.

    Expect next

    • Which part of the curve do you watch?
    • How does an inversion affect bank earnings?
    • What is happening to the curve right now?

    Reported by candidates at State Street (Equity Research, Boston, 2020). 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.