$1 million to invest....

gob

Hypotheitical question I'm expecting at an assessment centre for a large investment bank on Tuesday; any tips?

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

gob

Well of course I have some ideas of my own but as you correctly pointed out Dave there is no right or wrong answer so I wanted to see what other people thought; that is of course the purpose of this forum. Knowing nothing about me I wouldn't be so quick to judge weather I am appropriate for the position.

pog it

Well you can easily justify say a 10% allocation to Gold for example.
And you can justify investing in renewable energy.

By the way, the very best of luck to you.

DJDC

Why do people never say what job they are going for in the "large investment bank"?

lucky-colm

DJDC wrote: »

Why do people never say what job they are going for in the "large investment bank"?

yes is there even this mysterious "large investment bank"

bet he is going for a job in tesco's, title, "mars bar sourcing guy"

:D

ps
best of luck with the interview

gob

It's european equities quant analyst; J.P. Morgan London. Big enough for you?

lucky-colm

gob wrote: »

It's european equities quant analyst; J.P. Morgan London. Big enough for you?

that would cut the mustard allright:)

Raskolnikov

The standard answer would be a basket of high-yielding, blue-chip equities spread across multiple sectors.

I know a guy who got asked a similar question and listed a number of awful companies who had performed poorly and whose stock price had plummeted. He reasoned that while there would be a few losers, the winners would more than make up for them. He got the job.

DJDC

Ok dude congrats on interview. Great brandname.

If its first round I guess it will be the actual team members interviewing you so prepare Heston/Stochastic volatility questions, some C++ questions etc. They may want the traders to interview who like to ask more intuition based questions around option pricing i.e. strike 100, current value 100 or call and put same? etc.

To be honest that question in your OP will probably be one of the easist you will get Use portfolio diversification theory to back up your answers.

gob

DJDC wrote: »

Ok dude congrats on interview. Great brandname.

If its first round I guess it will be the actual team members interviewing you so prepare Heston/Stochastic volatility questions, some C++ questions etc. They may want the traders to interview who like to ask more intuition based questions around option pricing i.e. strike 100, current value 100 or call and put same? etc.

To be honest that question in your OP will probably be one of the easist you will get Use portfolio diversification theory to back up your answers.

It's actually the final round, there was no first round, not even a telephone interview which I thought was a bit strange. I have never even heard of Heston/Stochastic volatility!

My background is in engineering and I'm only 10 weeks into my masters in financial maths in DCU which is for obvious reasons more heavily focused on the maths behind the theory.

I don't wanna sound negative but I just got the confirmation email today and the email address of all the other people going for the position were included; all Oxford, LSE, UCL, Warwick and Imperial extensions. Lets just say I'm not a confident man.

DJDC

Lose the inferiority complex now or else you are already beaten. As someone with an Irish undergrad and a Masters from one those universities you mentioned and who works in markets, I can tell you now you have nothing to be afraid of. Be hungry and dont be afraid to show it.