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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

resilience and comfort with the performance-driven, closely measured culture of a prop trading floor

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.

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?

quick probabilistic reasoning and comfort quantifying edge under pressure

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

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?

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?

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?

basic grasp of hedging logic and options structures relevant to the desks here

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?

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?

risk discipline and whether the candidate has a structured approach rather than gut reaction alone