How to understand enough about trading/markets to pass an interview

[john kane]

ive got a first round interview with lehman brothers for their graduate trading program.

one slight problem.

i know nothing (technical) about trading.

the interview will be next week.

i know there is a reading list as a sticky but i dont have time to buy books and read them.

all i know is you go long when you think the price will go up and short when you expect it to go down (something like you borrow the stock at time t and give it back at time t+1 and pay for it at the lower price).

anyway, sample interview questions i could be asked (in addition to the usual teamwork, leadership etc) are:

how do you value a company and how are financial statements interrelated?

What do you consider to be the long-term global impact of the current price of oil?

What time of year would a ski lodge be likely to need more financing? For what?

Where do you believe the equity market is heading this year and why?


any suggestions/help/advice greatly appreciated.

i understand ill have to read the economist, FT, and a few other bits and bobs, but what else should i do?

[dp13368]

Motley Fool: www.fool.com

[john kane]

thanks for the link. just reading over the site now.

i also just bought 2 books on amazon; "vault guide to finance interviews" and "vault career guide to investment banking". hopefully these should help.

[higher_energy]

i could have sent these to you via aim

[edtost]

[ QUOTE ]
thanks for the link. just reading over the site now.

i also just bought 2 books on amazon; "vault guide to finance interviews" and "vault career guide to investment banking". hopefully these should help.

[/ QUOTE ]

vault guides are good, but the IB one will be close to useless in preparing for a trading interview.

also, i tended to have more questions relating to projects/classes from my resume than the brain-teaser types that the vault guides tend to emphasize.

[john kane]

thanks for the replies.

im going to try to prepare answers for questions such as:

firm + why trading questions

go over my cv and be able to say for each part what skills i learnt, what i found hard about it.

general questions about teamwork, communication, motivation questions

trading questions such as interest rates, bonds, equities market.

is there anything else or any questions in particular i should try to go over?

many thanks

[TMDG]

For a recent first round trading interview, I got asked a bunch of basic math questions...multiplying 2 digit numbers in my head, adding my phone number, etc..they also asked a few questions where i had to basically calculate the EV of a certain game they made up. all of which you should be pretty confident with..being a poker player.

[arsoisaen]

my trading questions:

if cpi is less than expected, what happens
prob of pulling different color balls out of a bag
18*19