Mutual Fund Mastery interview preparation

Indian AMCs, distributors, registrars and the global fund houses that hire for the same skills — covering the trust structure, NAV and cut-off rules, SEBI scheme categorisation, debt risk and the Potential Risk Class matrix, passives, costs, taxation and distribution. 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.

Jump to the question bank

Question bank

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions: 100
Traced to a firm: 32
Firms: 19
Updated: September 2026

Showing 1–1 of 1 · filtered from 100Clear filters

024What is yield to maturity?Debt schemesIntermediatetechnicalPIMCOFixed Income · Sydney · 2025
Say this
The single discount rate that makes the present value of all a bond's future cash flows equal its current market price. It is the internal rate of return you earn if you buy at that price, hold to maturity, collect every coupon, and reinvest each coupon at that same yield.
Then walk it
1. It solves price for yield. Price is observable, the cash flows are contractual, so YTM is what falls out — which is why you can compare a five-year and a ten-year bond on one number.
2. Price and yield move inversely. If yields rise, the fixed coupons are worth less, so the price falls. How much it falls is duration.
3. The three assumptions people skip: you hold to maturity, the issuer does not default, and every coupon is reinvested at the YTM. The reinvestment assumption is the one that breaks in the real world — a falling rate environment means you reinvest coupons at less than the YTM and realise less than it promised.
4. In a mutual fund context, the portfolio YTM on a fact sheet is a weighted average of the holdings' yields, gross of the expense ratio. So the number you actually earn is roughly portfolio YTM minus TER, assuming nothing defaults and the manager does not trade.
5. And a high portfolio YTM is not a good thing by itself. A debt fund quoting 9 percent when the equivalent gilt is at 7 is telling you it holds credit risk or long duration. Read the yield alongside the rating profile and the Macaulay duration or it is meaningless.
6. For a callable or a puttable bond you would use yield to call or yield to worst instead, because maturity is no longer the binding date.
Where candidates lose it
Defining YTM as the coupon rate or as the current yield. Current yield is coupon over price and ignores capital gain to maturity. Also, the reinvestment assumption is the part that separates a memorised definition from an understood one — say it before you are asked.
Expect next
- What if the coupons cannot be reinvested at that rate?
- A debt fund's fact sheet shows a 9 percent YTM. What do you check next?
- How does YTM differ from current yield and from yield to call?
Reported by candidates at PIMCO (Fixed Income, Sydney, 2025). 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.

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Say this

Then walk it

Where candidates lose it

Expect next