Quant interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

53

Firms

15

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsOld Mission Capital12Tower Research Capital10Jump Trading7Akuna Capital5Citadel4DED.E. Shaw3Jane Street3ACAQR Capital Management2DRW2Millennium Management2Schonfeld2SCSquarepoint Capital2Susquehanna International Group2Belvedere Trading1Optiver1

Topic

All topicsProbability10Coins, cards and games6Expected value8Statistics11Market making15Estimation and mental maths4Stochastic processes4Regression5Machine learning6Time series6Programming10Options and derivatives8Fit and motivation7

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyBrainteaserTechnicalCaseMarket viewFit

1. 086Explain how you would price an option.Options and derivativesIntermediatetechnicalDRWQuantitative Trading · Chicago · 2025

   Say this

   The core idea is replication. If I can build a portfolio of the underlying and cash that matches the option's payoff in every state of the world, then no-arbitrage says the option must cost what that portfolio costs. Everything else, Black-Scholes included, is a way of computing that cost.

   Then walk it

   1. Start with one period and two states, because it makes the logic visible. Stock at 100 goes to 110 or 90, a call struck at 100 pays 10 or 0. Hold delta shares plus B in cash and solve two equations: delta is (10 minus 0) over (110 minus 90), which is 0.5, and then B falls out. The option price is 0.5 times 100 plus B. No probabilities were used anywhere.
   2. That is the key insight to state explicitly: the price does not depend on the real-world probability of the up move, only on the size of the moves. Rearranging gives the risk-neutral probability, which is the probability that makes the discounted stock a martingale, and pricing becomes a discounted expectation under that measure.
   3. Extend the tree to many steps and you get the binomial model, which handles American exercise naturally because you compare intrinsic against continuation at each node. Take the limit with the step size going to zero and you get Black-Scholes.
   4. Black-Scholes in words: the price is the discounted risk-neutral expectation of the payoff when the stock follows geometric Brownian motion with constant volatility. The formula's two N terms are the risk-neutral probability of finishing in the money and the delta-weighted version of it.
   5. Then the practical truth, which is the answer a trading firm actually wants: nobody uses Black-Scholes to find the price, because the price is on the screen. You use it as a translator from price to implied volatility, then you trade the volatility surface. Constant vol is false, the smile proves it, so the real work is interpolating and extrapolating the surface consistently and hedging the Greeks it implies.

   Where candidates lose it

   Reciting the Black-Scholes formula. Anyone can memorise it. The interviewer wants replication and no-arbitrage, and specifically wants to hear that the real-world probability drops out. Then close by saying the formula is used backwards, to extract implied vol from a market price. That last move is what marks a trader rather than a student.

   Expect next

   • Why does the real-world probability not appear in the price?
   • What are the assumptions, and which one fails hardest?
   • How would you price an American put?

   Reported by candidates at DRW (Quantitative Trading, Chicago, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

2. 096Tell me about a time you had to work in a group towards a common goal.Fit and motivationCorephone / first roundDRWTrading · London · 2026

   Say this

   One story, told in ninety seconds, with a real disagreement in it. Situation, what you specifically did, what the friction was, how it resolved and what the outcome was. The disagreement is the part that makes it informative.

   Then walk it

   1. Pick the example where the group was under real constraint: a deadline, a broken plan, a member who was not delivering, or a genuine technical disagreement about the right approach.
   2. Be precise about your own contribution. Say I rather than we when describing what you did, because a we-only answer makes it impossible to tell what you actually contributed.
   3. The friction is the content. What did you disagree about, how did you argue it, and were you the one who changed their mind? Saying I was wrong and updated when someone showed me their numbers is a strong answer on a trading floor, where being persuadable by evidence is a job requirement.
   4. End with the outcome and a number if there is one. Shipped on time, placed second of forty, cut the runtime in half. And then one sentence on what you would do differently, which is what separates reflection from a rehearsed story.
   5. Connect it to trading in one line at the end, not as a speech: a trading desk is a small team sharing risk, so how you handle disagreement about a price matters more than your individual answer. Keep it short, they will draw the inference themselves.

   Where candidates lose it

   A frictionless story where everyone got along and the project succeeded. It carries no information and interviewers discount it entirely. Also avoid the story where you rescued incompetent teammates, which reads as arrogance. Include a moment where you were wrong or had to be persuaded.

   Expect next

   • What would you do differently?
   • Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone more senior.
   • What do you do when a teammate is not pulling their weight?

   Reported by candidates at DRW (Trading, 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.