The role is to sit at trading desk and support traders in risk management, anyone here is holding the job and can share some insights or interview questions?
not specifically for the position but in general be ready for a lot questins about current state of the economy, most importantly FED policies (plus fiscal policies) and effects on interest rates, dollar, commodities and not to mention yield curve. For instance i would concentrate especially on yield curve trading strategies. And maybe futures and swaps. Burghardt has a good reference book on bond futures. I interviewed with a small bond shop a while ago. with 4 different people the same day and every one of them was more or less the same. We talked about current issues in the markets. I recommend that you make a list of these issues and be able to talk about them under pressure. Bec they will challenge you for every word you say during the interview and better be ready to defend what you say…In the second interview the guy handed me a test. a few brainteaser type questions, a question about BSM and analysis of a portfolio with tresuries agencies and some EM sovereigns and wanted me to write a short analysis of the portfolio, and the fair value of a bond just offered to the company. Yeah read a lot of WSJ and blogs before the interview. Hope that helps. good luck!
Another pet peeve – I don’t understand why people feel the need to capitalize “FED” as if it was an acronym for something. My boss does that all the time too. She also capitalizes AMBAC Financial Group as if their full corporate name consisted of 7 words.
itstoohot, thank you for your input. I haven’t been interviewed for over 3 years and was wondering how people will test my fixed income knowledge, is he going to ask something like ‘tell me how do you price a CDS’ or ‘do you think it’s good time to buy MTA mortgage’, or ‘what’s the settlement risk of buying TBAs?’ how do you guys answer these questions concisely?
So if you are going into risk management and someone asks you the first two, that’s not the job you are applying for. The third is pretty specific and you should just have some answer about general settlement procedures for TBA bonds. If someone tries giving you a CFA exam at an interview, you can’t win.