Investment Banking interview preparation
Every question below is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it. Answers are written the way you would actually say them out loud — answer first, then the mechanism, then the limitation.
100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them
- Questions
- 100
- Traced to a firm
- 100
- Firms
- 46
- Updated
- September 2026
071What is happening in the US economy right now?J.P. MorganPrivate Banking · Charlotte · 2026Truist SecuritiesRisk Management · Charlotte · 2026CitiGeneralist · London · 2026
Say this
Answer with a structure rather than a list of headlines: growth, inflation, the labour market, then what the central bank is doing about it, then what that means for your desk. Four numbers and one implication.
Then walk it
- Know four figures cold on the morning of your interview: GDP growth, headline and core inflation, the unemployment rate, and the policy rate. Say them with the vintage, as in 'core PCE ran at X in the latest print'.
- Then the tension. There is almost always one: inflation sticky while the labour market softens, or growth resilient while rates stay restrictive. Naming the tension is what makes it analysis instead of recitation.
- Then the policy read: what the market is pricing for the next two or three meetings, and what would change it.
- Then bring it back to the seat. Something like: for M&A, a lower path for rates lowers the sponsor's cost of debt, which supports higher entry multiples and should reopen the large-cap LBO pipeline.
- Keep it to ninety seconds. This question tests preparation and judgement about relevance, not breadth.
Where candidates lose it
Reciting headlines with no numbers, or numbers with no implication for banking. Also, opinions about politics. Stay on the transmission mechanism from macro to your desk, and check your figures the morning of the interview because a stale print is worse than none.
Expect next
- How is that affecting the M&A market?
- Describe Jerome Powell's tenure.
- Where did the S&P 500 close last night?
Reported by candidates at J.P. Morgan (Private Banking, Charlotte, 2026); Truist Securities (Risk Management, Charlotte, 2026); Citi (Generalist, London, 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.