Quantitative Trading Intern - Winter Quarter 2027

Tell me about a time you had to make a decision quickly with incomplete information. What did you do and how did it turn out?

What they are checking: decision-making speed and comfort with uncertainty, core to a trading floor

Give me an example of working on a team where you disagreed with someone's approach. How did you handle it?

What they are checking: collaboration style, since interns rotate across desks with traders, developers, and strategists

Describe a time you had to learn something technical very quickly, like a new tool or a new subject, with little guidance.

What they are checking: self-directed learning ability, important given the fast-paced BTU training model

Why trading, and specifically why market making over other paths like asset management or a tech company?

What they are checking: genuine motivation and whether the candidate understands what this specific job actually involves

Tell me about a time you competed against others, whether in academics, sports, or something else, and how you handled the pressure of being evaluated constantly.

What they are checking: resilience and comfort with the performance-driven, closely measured culture of a prop trading floor

If you're making a market in an ETF option and you suddenly see the underlying stock jump 2 percent on news, what do you do with your quotes in the next few seconds?

What they are checking: understanding of market-making mechanics and reaction speed to new information

Suppose you're managing a position and it starts losing money faster than you expected. What's your process for deciding whether to cut it or hold?

What they are checking: risk discipline and whether the candidate has a structured approach rather than gut reaction alone

Walk me through how you'd price a call option if you didn't have a pricing model in front of you, just using intuition about the underlying, volatility, and time to expiration.

What they are checking: whether the candidate has real intuition for options pricing beyond memorized formulas

Say I flip a coin that's weighted so it lands heads 60 percent of the time. I'll pay you 1 dollar for heads and you pay me 1 dollar for tails. Do you want to play, and how many times?

What they are checking: quick probabilistic reasoning and comfort quantifying edge under pressure

What's 17 times 24, and walk me through how you got there?

What they are checking: mental math speed and technique under time pressure

Tell me about a project where you wrote code to solve a problem. What language did you use and what was the hardest part?

What they are checking: actual programming experience and ability to explain technical work simply

How would you explain what implied volatility is to someone who has never traded before?

What they are checking: depth of understanding versus surface-level vocabulary

If you had 100,000 dollars and had to build a simple hedged position using an ETF and its options, how would you think about structuring it?

What they are checking: basic grasp of hedging logic and options structures relevant to the desks here