13 questions reported in IMC interviews, organised by the group that asks them. Every question carries a model answer and graded feedback on your own attempt.
Questions
Easy · Medium
Hard
Model builds
Built in the spreadsheet grid
Expected value under pressure, adverse selection and inventory risk. 8 questions
A basic mental-maths screen that tests whether a candidate separates probability from payoff.
You pay $3 to play a game. A fair six-sided die is rolled: you receive $12 on a 6 and nothing otherwise. Should you play once? What would change if you could play 1,000 independent times?
A first-round market-microstructure check for candidates new to electronic trading.
A stock is quoted at $49.98 bid and $50.02 offer. You want to buy 1,000 shares now. Explain the difference between sending a market order and a limit order at $50.00.
A first-round electronic-trading screen checks that a candidate can read a two-sided market precisely.
An ETF is quoted at $101.20 bid and $101.28 offer. What are the mid-price and bid-ask spread? If you buy 500 shares at the offer and immediately value them at the mid-price, what is your…
Fermi estimation is a standard prop trading round. You have sixty seconds.
How many tennis balls fit in a Boeing 747? You have one minute.
The interactive trading game used at every prop firm.
I have a bag with 10 balls, each numbered 1 to 10. I draw three and the contract settles on their sum. Make me a market. Then I show you that one of the balls drawn is a 10, what's your new market?
A senior prop-trading case tests how you turn fill data into a controlled quoting decision.
Your ETF market-making strategy earns the spread on most fills, but over the past week your fills lose 4 basis points on average after one second. Volatility and displayed spreads are unchanged. What…
The core mechanic of market making, tested with a live scenario.
You're making a market at 99 / 101 in a contract. You get hit on the bid three times in a row and are now long 300 lots. What do you do with your quote?
A systematic-trading review after a research backtest appears to generate alpha around splits, special dividends and index changes.
A daily equity signal shows a sharp return improvement after a new corporate-action vendor feed is added. The gain is concentrated around special dividends, rights issues and spin-offs. How would you…
Greeks, skew, hedging costs and payoff construction. 3 questions
Volatility desks use this to test whether candidates understand what an option seller is actually betting on.
A dealer sells a one-month at-the-money straddle at 30% implied volatility and delta-hedges it daily. Realised volatility over the month is 20%, with no jump large enough to disrupt hedging. Did the…
Trading interviews use this to test whether you can construct an arbitrage on the spot.
State put-call parity. A stock trades at $100. The $100 strike call trades at $8, the put at $5, and the risk-free rate is 4% with 1 year to expiry, no dividends. Is there an arbitrage? If so,…
Standard for derivatives desks and quant trading interviews.
Name the inputs to the Black-Scholes model and the direction each moves a call option's price. Which input is not observable, and what does that imply?
Multiple testing, out-of-sample discipline, capacity and decay. 2 questions
Tests recursive reasoning. A staple at trading firms.
You roll a fair six-sided die. You may either take the value shown in dollars, or re-roll. You get at most two rolls total. What is the expected value of the game if you play optimally? Then: what if…
The signature exercise at proprietary trading firms.
Make me a market on the sum of the digits of a randomly chosen phone number in the room. Then I'll trade against you. Explain how you'd think through the whole exercise.
Write your answer, get it graded on technical accuracy, completeness and communication, and see exactly which mechanic you missed.
Company tags reflect where a question type is commonly reported in interviews. They are not sourced from, endorsed by, or affiliated with IMC.