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. 081How would you initiate coverage on a new company?Research processIntermediatetechnicalSell-side research

   Say this

   Read the last three years of filings and transcripts, build the model from drivers, map the competitive landscape, talk to the company and the channel, then decide what your differentiated view is before writing a word.

   Then walk it

   1. Primary documents first: three years of annual filings, the last eight quarterly transcripts, the investor day materials and the proxy for incentives. The transcripts tell you what management has promised and how the questions have changed.
   2. Build the model from drivers and reconcile it to reported history. If you cannot rebuild the last two years from your drivers, your model is wrong.
   3. Map the industry: who competes, what share each has, how the value chain splits economics, what the customers care about. Read the competitors' filings, because they describe your company from the outside.
   4. Channel work: customers, distributors, former employees, industry consultants. This is where a differentiated view most often comes from.
   5. Then form the thesis. An initiation with no variant view is a description, and nobody reads it. Decide what you believe that consensus does not, and structure the note around defending it.
   6. Then the deliverable: rating, target, earnings forecasts that differ from consensus in a specific place, the key debates set out fairly, and the risks. And a clear statement of what would change your mind.

   Where candidates lose it

   Describing a document-gathering exercise with no thesis. An initiation is judged on whether it says something. Leading with the variant view rather than the process is the answer that sounds like an analyst.

   Expect next

   • How long would that take you?
   • Where does the differentiated view usually come from?
   • How would you handle initiating with a sell rating?
2. 089What is the case study process here, and how would you approach a two-week modelling test?Career and fitIntermediatecase studyPoint72Investment Banking · London · 2026DED.E. ShawGeneralist · New York · 2025

   Say this

   Treat it as a recommendation, not a model. Spend the first day deciding what the investment question is, then build only the model you need to answer it, and reserve the last quarter of the time for the write-up.

   Then walk it

   1. Identify the decision first. What is the one variable this investment turns on? Everything you build should serve answering that.
   2. Build a model sized to the question. A beautiful 20-tab model that does not resolve the debate scores worse than a three-tab model that does. Graders are checking judgement about materiality.
   3. Do primary work. Transcripts, competitor filings, industry data, and anything you can verify externally. This is what separates entries, because everyone can build a model.
   4. Structure the output like a note: recommendation and target up front, the variant view, the evidence, the valuation, the risks and the falsifier. Never make the reader hunt for your conclusion.
   5. Sensitise honestly. Show the bear case with a number attached, and say what you are least confident about. Overclaiming certainty is the most common way candidates lose credibility.
   6. Then rehearse defending it out loud, because the presentation is usually where the decision is made. Expect them to attack your weakest assumption, and have the downside quantified before they ask.

   Where candidates lose it

   Spending all the time on the model and writing the conclusion in the last hour. The model is the working; the recommendation is the product. Budget time backwards from the write-up.

   Expect next

   • How did you get your assumptions?
   • What is the bear case worth?
   • What would you have done with another week?

   Reported by candidates at Point72 (Investment Banking, London, 2026); D.E. Shaw (Generalist, New York, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

3. 094How would you size a market from the bottom up?Case and estimationIntermediatetechnicalAdvent InternationalPrivate Equity · Boston · 2022Viking Global InvestorsQuantitative Research · New York · 2024

   Say this

   Count the customers and multiply by what each can spend. Number of potential buyers, times realistic annual spend per buyer, times the share of that spend your product can address. Then sanity-check against a top-down figure.

   Then walk it

   1. Define the buyer precisely. Not 'all businesses' but 'US companies with more than 500 employees in regulated industries', which you can actually count from public data.
   2. Estimate spend per buyer from observable evidence: the company's own average contract value, a competitor's disclosed pricing, or what the buyer currently spends on the alternative.
   3. Multiply, then apply a realistic ceiling on penetration. No product reaches 100 percent of its theoretical market, and assuming it does is how addressable markets become fiction.
   4. Cross-check top-down: industry revenue from trade bodies or the sum of the competitors' revenues. If bottom-up and top-down differ by more than a factor of two, one of your assumptions is wrong and you should find out which.
   5. Distinguish total addressable market, the serviceable portion given your product and geography, and the realistically obtainable share. Most published figures quote the first and imply the third.
   6. Then state the number as a range with the two assumptions that drive it, and show what the answer is if each is halved.

   Where candidates lose it

   Citing a published market size figure. Those are almost always top-down, commissioned, and inflated. The whole point of bottom-up is that you build it from countable units and can defend each step.

   Expect next

   • How many books were sold in the US last year?
   • What penetration is realistic?
   • How much of that is in the current share price?

   Reported by candidates at Advent International (Private Equity, Boston, 2022); Viking Global Investors (Quantitative Research, New York, 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.