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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Question bank

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
Level
AnyCoreIntermediateHard
Type
AnyTechnicalCaseFitBrainteaserMarket view
Showing 1–1 of 1 · filtered from 100Clear filters
  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?

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.