Hedge Funds interview preparation

Long-short equity, macro, event-driven, distressed, multi-manager platforms and the Indian Category III landscape. 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
39
Firms
16
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsMan Group10Balyasny Asset Management7Bridgewater Associates3D.E. Shaw3Apollo Global Management2KKR2Oaktree Capital Management2Point722Squarepoint Capital2AQR Capital Management1Baupost Group1Coatue Management1HPS Investment Partners1Northern Trust1Viking Global Investors1Wolverine Trading1
Topic
All topicsStrategy taxonomy8Stock pitch10Short selling6Portfolio construction8Risk and drawdown8Performance and alpha7Event-driven and merger arb8Distressed and credit5Fund structure and economics7Financing, NAV and operations6Compliance and research process5Quant and systematic6India and Category III AIFs5Career and fit11
Level
AnyCoreIntermediateHard
Type
AnyTechnicalMarket viewBrainteaserCaseFit
Showing 1–1 of 1 · filtered from 100Clear filters
  1. 019Pitch me a short.Short sellingIntermediatesuperdayLong-short equityShort-biased funds

    Say this

    Same structure as a long, but three extra things have to be in the pitch: why the market is wrong in a way that resolves on a clock, what the borrow costs, and what blows you up. Shorts are timing trades, not valuation trades, so name the catalyst before the valuation.

    Then walk it

    1. Lead with the trade and the constraint. 'Short X at 40, target 25, borrow is 3 percent annualised and there is ample availability, and I would cap it at 2 percent of the book because short interest is already 9 percent of float.'
    2. Then the thesis, and pick a category. The good short buckets are structural decline being extrapolated as cyclical, accounting that overstates earnings quality, a broken unit economic that growth is masking, and a balance sheet that needs to refinance into a worse market.
    3. Then the catalyst with a date, because time works against a short. A refinancing, a covenant test, a lock-up expiry, a competitor's capacity coming online, a guidance reset. Valuation alone does not close a short.
    4. Then the carry. Borrow cost, dividends you owe, and the interest you earn on the proceeds. A 12 percent borrow means you need the thesis to work within months, not years, and saying that shows you have actually shorted something.
    5. Then the blow-up risk, explicitly. Float, short interest as a percent of float and days to cover, retail interest, index events, and whether the company could do something reflexive like a buyback, a raise or getting acquired. A takeout is the classic way a good short thesis loses 40 percent overnight.
    6. Close with sizing and stop. Shorts get smaller as they go against you in risk terms because the position grows, so I would run a hard stop and a smaller starting size than an equivalent-conviction long.

    Where candidates lose it

    Pitching an expensive stock. 'It trades at 60 times earnings' is not a short thesis, it is an observation, and the last decade has been brutal to people who thought otherwise. Also, candidates forget the borrow and the squeeze risk entirely, which tells a PM you have never actually been short anything.

    Expect next

    • What is the borrow on that name?
    • What is short interest as a percentage of float?
    • What would make you cover?

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.