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
010How do you build a model that is detailed enough to be useful but simple enough that you can cover a lot of companies?Balyasny Asset ManagementEquity Research · New York · 2026
Say this
Model deeply only where the variance is. For most companies two or three line items drive the outcome, so those get detailed driver builds and everything else gets a margin assumption or a percentage of sales.
Then walk it
- Identify the swing factors first. For a retailer it is same-store sales and gross margin. For a bank it is net interest margin and provisions. For a software company it is net retention and sales efficiency. Model those properly.
- Everything else goes to ratios: other opex as a percent of revenue, working capital as days, tax at the guided rate. Precision there adds nothing and costs you maintenance time.
- Standardise the template across the coverage universe so the same row does the same thing in every file. That is what actually makes 15 names maintainable, because updating a quarter becomes mechanical.
- Build it around the disclosure you will actually receive. If the company only reports two segments, a five-segment model will be broken every quarter.
- And keep a one-page output: the drivers, the earnings bridge versus consensus, and the valuation. If the summary tab tells the story, the depth underneath can stay limited.
- The test I would apply: can I update this model in 20 minutes on results day? If not, it is too complex to cover 15 names with.
Where candidates lose it
Saying you would build the most detailed model possible. On the buy side, model complexity is a liability. The insight being tested is that modelling effort should be allocated to variance, not spread evenly.
Expect next
- How many names can one analyst realistically cover?
- What goes on your summary tab?
- How do you update on results day?
Reported by candidates at Balyasny Asset Management (Equity Research, New York, 2026). 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.