How to Pitch a Trade in a Sales and Trading Interview

What the question is testing

Interviewers are not checking whether your trade would make money. They want to see that you follow markets, can structure a thought, understand risk, and can defend a view when someone pushes on it. A modest idea that is well structured and well defended beats a brilliant one you cannot explain.

It is also the most open-ended question you will get. There is no textbook answer to copy, which is why candidates who have not practised it tend to ramble, and why it separates people quickly.

Choosing the idea

• Pick something liquid and simple: a major currency pair, a government bond or an equity index. Exotic trades give interviewers more places to catch you out.
• Pick something you researched this week. You need to know where it is trading and what the next scheduled event is.
• Prepare more than one, across different asset classes, so you can match the desk you are interviewing for.

What happens after the pitch

The pitch itself is short. The questions that follow are the real interview, and they will go at your levels, your risks and your choice of instrument. If you cannot defend a number you gave, you should not have given it. Know your idea well enough to be challenged on any part of it.

If you are interviewing for sales

A sales interviewer wants to know who you would call with the idea and why. A real money manager benchmarked to an index has different constraints from a hedge fund that can go short. Explaining how you would frame the same idea for each shows you understand what the sales job is.

How to practise

Say it out loud, time it, and ask a friend to interrupt with questions. Do it weekly with a new idea, since the aim is to make delivering a pitch automatic and not to memorise a single one.

For the rest of the question types, see the interview questions guide.