Financial Analysis interview preparation

The three statements, working capital, ratios, forecasting, variance analysis, costing, capital budgeting, valuation and the modelling and Excel work that fills the day, plus the fit questions about why this seat. 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 — we do not invent attributions.

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Question bank

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
42
Firms
28
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsMoody's7Bain Capital3State Street3Ares Management2BlackRock2D.E. Shaw2Morgan Stanley2Oaktree Capital Management2S&P Global2Bridgewater Associates1Citadel1Franklin Templeton1Golub Capital1Harris Williams1Houlihan Lokey1J.P. Morgan1Jane Street1Marshall Wace1Millennium Management1Morningstar1PIMCO1Sycamore Partners1Truist Securities1Two Sigma1Vanguard1Wellington Management1Wells Fargo Securities1Wolverine Trading1
Topic
All topicsThree statements9Accounting policy and standards5Working capital and cash7Ratio analysis8Forecasting and budgeting9Variance and management reporting7Unit economics and costing8Capital budgeting7Cost of capital and valuation7Markets and rates5Modelling, Excel and data8Business partnering6Brainteasers and estimation4Fit and career10
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  1. 087If a date is a Monday, what day of the week will the same date be a year from now?Brainteasers and estimationIntermediatetechnicalOaktree Capital ManagementGeneralist · Los Angeles · 2022

    Say this

    Tuesday, unless a 29 February falls in between, in which case Wednesday. A normal year is 365 days, which is 52 weeks plus one day, so the day of the week advances by one. A leap year adds two.

    Then walk it

    1. The mechanism: 365 divided by 7 is 52 remainder 1. The remainder is the whole answer, so a year later is one weekday forward.
    2. 366 divided by 7 leaves remainder 2, so across a leap day you advance two, landing on Wednesday.
    3. The condition to state, because it is the actual test: does 29 February fall inside the twelve months between the two dates? So a date in March 2023 to March 2024 crosses the leap day and advances two; a date in March 2024 to March 2025 does not and advances one.
    4. The same modular arithmetic answers the harder version. Ten years forward is ten plus the number of leap days, modulo seven. Ten years with two leap days is 12 mod 7 equals 5, so five weekdays forward.
    5. Say the assumption out loud, that you are on the Gregorian calendar and ignoring the century rule where 1900 was not a leap year but 2000 was. That earns credit because it shows you checked the edge case rather than got lucky.
    6. And the reason these get asked in a credit or corporate finance interview: they are testing whether you reach for the structure, remainder after dividing by seven, rather than counting.

    Where candidates lose it

    Answering Tuesday with no condition attached. The interviewer is waiting to see whether you raise the leap year yourself. Saying 'Tuesday, or Wednesday if a 29 February falls in between' answers it completely in one sentence.

    Expect next

    • What about ten years from now?
    • What day of the week were you born on?
    • How many leap days between 2000 and 2100?

    Reported by candidates at Oaktree Capital Management (Generalist, Los Angeles, 2022). 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.