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. 091What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up investing?Investment philosophyCorephone / first roundAsset management

   Say this

   Top-down starts from the macro and works to sectors and then stocks. Bottom-up starts from individual companies and builds a portfolio from the best ideas, largely ignoring the macro view.

   Then walk it

   1. Top-down: form a view on growth, rates, inflation and currencies, then decide which regions and sectors benefit, then choose vehicles within them. Common in multi-asset and macro strategies.
   2. Bottom-up: analyse companies on their own merits, buy the ones with the widest gap between price and value, and let the sector weights fall out of that process. Common in fundamental long-only and long-short equity.
   3. The argument for bottom-up is that macro forecasting has a poor track record while company-level analysis has a more reliable edge. The argument for top-down is that in some sectors, banks, energy, mining, the macro variable determines the outcome regardless of company quality.
   4. In practice most fundamental investors are bottom-up with macro awareness: they will not build a macro forecast, but they will know what macro assumption is embedded in their position.
   5. The honest version for an interview is to say which you are and why, and then acknowledge where your approach is weakest. A pure bottom-up investor in a commodity producer is implicitly taking a price view whether they admit it or not.
   6. And match your answer to the firm. Saying you are a pure top-down thinker at a stock-picking shop is a mismatch you can avoid by reading what they run.

   Where candidates lose it

   Claiming to do both equally. That reads as having no process. Pick one, defend it, and acknowledge the cases where the other dominates.

   Expect next

   • Which are you?
   • Where does your approach break down?
   • How much macro should a stock picker have a view on?

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.