By the FinLingo Team | Capital markets practitioner, front office experience at a major European investment bank. FinLingo covers 342 lessons from bonds to exotic derivatives. About · Last updated:
Sales and trading interviews are the least predictable in investment banking. There is no fixed set of technical questions. Instead, interviewers test how you think about markets, communicate under pressure, and reason about risk. Preparation is about building a toolkit, not memorising answers.
You will be asked about markets. "What happened in markets this week?" Do not summarise headlines. Talk about moves: "The 10-year Treasury sold off 12 basis points to 4.35%, driven by stronger-than-expected payrolls. The curve steepened. VIX dropped from 16 to 14.5 as equities rallied." Quantify everything. Use the language of the desk.
"You have a $50 million long position in investment-grade credit. Spreads widen 50 basis points overnight. What is your approximate P&L?" You need duration. IG credit with roughly 5-year duration and 50bp spread widening: P&L ≈ −$50M × 5 × 0.0050 = −$1.25M. The interviewer is checking if you can reason in DV01 terms under pressure.
Sales candidates must explain products to clients. "Explain an Autocall to a wealth manager in 60 seconds." The best answers use analogies: "The Autocall is like a bet on the market staying stable. You earn 8% a year as long as the index stays above a floor. If the index drops significantly and stays down, you absorb the loss. If the index rises, the product pays you out early and you reinvest." No jargon. No term sheet language.
"I give you $1 million to trade. What do you do?" The worst answer is a specific trade idea. The best answer describes a framework: "First I assess the current vol environment. Is implied vol rich or cheap relative to realised? Then I look at skew: is downside protection expensive? Based on that, I size a position that risks no more than X% of the capital." They want process, not conviction.
They are less structured and more conversational. Instead of fixed technical questions, interviewers test market awareness (do you follow markets daily?), risk reasoning (can you compute a P&L from a spread move?), and communication (can you explain a structured product without jargon?). The focus is on how you think, not what you have memorised.
Read the Financial Times and Bloomberg daily for 4 to 6 weeks before your interview. Track key levels: Treasury yields, equity indices, VIX, major FX pairs. Understand why markets moved, not just that they did. Pair this with technical preparation: know your Greeks, understand basic products, and be able to compute DV01 and vega P&L quickly.
Preparing like it is an M&A interview. Candidates spend weeks on DCF and LBO models, then freeze when asked what the VIX is. S&T interviews require market fluency: you should know current levels, recent moves, and have a view on volatility. Technical depth on Greeks and products is more important than valuation frameworks.
FinLingo builds the market vocabulary and product knowledge S&T interviews demand. 342 lessons, on your phone. Level 1 is free.
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