Quantitative Trading Intern - Summer 2027

Tell me about a time you worked on a team project where people disagreed on the approach. How did it get resolved?

What they are checking: whether the candidate can hold a position under disagreement while still being collaborative, since trading desks run on debate

What's a market or an asset you've been following lately, and what's your view on it?

What they are checking: genuine curiosity about markets versus a canned answer memorized for interviews

Tell me about a time you had to learn something technical very quickly with no formal training. How did you approach it?

What they are checking: self-directed learning ability, since BTU expects interns to absorb a lot fast

Tell me about a time you had to work closely with someone whose skill set was really different from yours, like an engineer working with a trader.

What they are checking: ability to bridge technical and trading perspectives, since interns rotate between traders, developers, and strategists

Describe a time you made a decision with incomplete information and it turned out to be wrong. What did you take from it?

What they are checking: how the candidate handles being wrong, since trading involves constant small losses and recalibration

Why trading, and specifically why here at a proprietary firm instead of somewhere like a bank or a hedge fund?

What they are checking: whether the candidate understands what makes prop trading different and has done real research on the firm

Say you're making a market and someone hits your bid repeatedly. What does that tell you and what do you do?

What they are checking: understanding of adverse selection and how a market maker adjusts quotes in response to informed flow

Say you built a small model or script for a class or project and it gave you a result that seemed wrong. What did you do?

What they are checking: debugging instinct and whether the person checks their own work rather than trusting output blindly

If you were quoting a two-sided market and suddenly a piece of news hit that could move the underlying, what would you do in that instant?

What they are checking: reaction speed and risk awareness under uncertainty, core to a market-making mindset

Walk me through how you would price a simple option if you know the probability of the stock going up or down at each step. What's your thought process?

What they are checking: whether the candidate can reason through options pricing intuition from first principles, not just recite formulas

I'm going to give you a probability puzzle. Tell me how you'd break it down out loud, even if you don't get to the final number right away.

What they are checking: mental math speed and comfort thinking under pressure with an interviewer watching

If you had two correlated assets and one moved sharply while the other didn't, how would you think about that gap?

What they are checking: grasp of correlation, relative value, and whether the candidate can reason about risk across related instruments

How would you explain implied volatility to someone who has never traded options?

What they are checking: depth of understanding versus memorized jargon, and ability to communicate clearly

If you had a portfolio of options and the underlying gapped up overnight, walk me through what happens to your risk and what you'd want to check first.

What they are checking: practical understanding of greeks and risk management under a real market scenario