Susquehanna?

oscar23

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hi Guys, been surfing this forum on the quiet for many months now and have learned much...
I now have a chance to move into trading 'professionally' through an interview I have for an "Assistant Trader" position with Susquehanna SIG - I was just wondering if anyone here has experience of the company or of their interview technique? Not sure what to expect :confused:.
Any tips or info much appreciated :D!

-TGT.
 
Expect your brain to be tested.

I reckon it won't be easy, they'll be hard on you and the interview I doubt will follow the standard interview technique.

If they ask you what '2 x 367.5 / 6 =' for example or one of those stupid questions and you don't know, you better have some good quick answer for why you don't know and why it's not important to be able to do those kind of mental tricks.

Good luck, I think you'll need it.
 
anley said:
Expect your brain to be tested.

I reckon it won't be easy, they'll be hard on you and the interview I doubt will follow the standard interview technique.

If they ask you what '2 x 367.5 / 6 =' for example or one of those stupid questions and you don't know, you better have some good quick answer for why you don't know and why it's not important to be able to do those kind of mental tricks.

Good luck, I think you'll need it.

b*gger, I thought it'd be something like that, better get a bit of practice in then! - I'm not bad at the mental stuff, but no *super-whizz* either... I've been told to expect plenty of probability stuff too... so we'll see ;)...

-TGT
 
oscar23 said:
b*gger, I thought it'd be something like that, better get a bit of practice in then! - I'm not bad at the mental stuff, but no *super-whizz* either... I've been told to expect plenty of probability stuff too... so we'll see ;)...-TGT

how did you get on?
 
poorly. The math wasn't too tough but I didn't do myself justice with it, all probability based questions... I'd do much better now, knowing what to expect...but I guess you could say that about most things ;)

TGT.
 
Did interview with them in Dublin - 3 guys and loads of Poker/Probability Questions - again if i'd known in advance would have performed better. Prob. about 5 different types of Q's and I'd say I got 2 correct - but no job offer. They seemed very Quant based
 
I face the same interview this week. Can anyone remeber any specific questions you were asked? I have been brushing up on probability/statistics but it would be very helpful to know which specific areas to concentrate on i.e. flipping coins/rolling dice/poker/lotteries, whatever. Any advice greatly appreciated :confused:
 
If you look in New Market Wizards you will see an interview with the guy who set up Susquevanna - or whatever - He is a poker junkie so that's why they are all probability questions etc - just quite interesting
 
blangis, do you remember any specific questions asked at SIG's interview or what kind of questions to expect? Do they require any detailed knowledge on probability such as bayes theorem, or just A-level staff? are the questions more prob or stat oriented?
 
sissymoon said:
blangis, do you remember any specific questions asked at SIG's interview or what kind of questions to expect? Do they require any detailed knowledge on probability such as bayes theorem, or just A-level staff? are the questions more prob or stat oriented?

try looking at the first 3 chaps of any standard level text book....condition prob and the like!!!!
 
Interview for me too!

Blangis said:
I face the same interview this week. Can anyone remeber any specific questions you were asked? I have been brushing up on probability/statistics but it would be very helpful to know which specific areas to concentrate on i.e. flipping coins/rolling dice/poker/lotteries, whatever. Any advice greatly appreciated :confused:


I have the same question for you. I now face an interview with Susquehanna and would like to prep myself as much as I can. Does anyone remember any specific questions besides 2*367.5/6 ?
 
mojo2000 said:
I have the same question for you. I now face an interview with Susquehanna and would like to prep myself as much as I can. Does anyone remember any specific questions besides 2*367.5/6 ?

Try (3/9.5)^2 ????

Maybe this one: if a stock today is woth 100 then what is the probability of that stock, with a volatility of 12% (ignore interest rates/divs), being within a price range of 130-140 in 5 months time?

Conditional probability, maybe

Try looking at a basic derivatives book (like hull) as there is some probability stuff in there...

good luck
 
Interview

I have this same interview coming up.....Any tips on what to brush up on?

oscar23 said:
hi Guys, been surfing this forum on the quiet for many months now and have learned much...
I now have a chance to move into trading 'professionally' through an interview I have for an "Assistant Trader" position with Susquehanna SIG - I was just wondering if anyone here has experience of the company or of their interview technique? Not sure what to expect :confused:.
Any tips or info much appreciated :D!

-TGT.
 
I know this thread is from a few months ago but it's still on the first page so better use this than start another one.

I have a phone interview with Susquehanna tomorrow for an assistant trader position, they said have a pen and paper as they will ask probability and logical quetions. I've heard they employ game theory, expected value, probability etc. in their trading startegies and the four founders were big into poker etc.

robertral said:
Maybe this one: if a stock today is worth 100 then what is the probability of that stock, with a volatility of 12% (ignore interest rates/divs), being within a price range of 130-140 in 5 months time?

Any one care to shed some light on this question, does it have anything to do with efficient markets hypothesis and the probability of a rise in price??
 
Hi,

To answer this you will need to brush up on stochastic calculus.

I will give you a few pointers and then lets see (assuming that you check this forum before your interview) if you can figure it out...

OK, so let's use the following notations:

St0 = Stock price at time zero (now)
Sigma = Stock's volatility
Sat1= Stock price a (130) at time 1 (time 1 is 5 months from now)
Sbt1 = Stock price b (140) at time 1

The first question is how volatile we expect the stock to be between t0 and t1. If the Annualised volatility for the stock is 12% (stock volatilities are ALWAYS quoted on an annualised basis) then what is the 5 month volatility?

Because standard deviation (the measure we use for volatility) is not linear through time but variance (the square root of the standard deviation) is linear through time we must multiply the annualised volatility by the square root of 5 months to get the 5 month volatility.

As there are 12 months in a year we must look at 5 months as 5/12, so:

12%*sqrt(5/12) = 7.75%.

So, to a 1 standard deviation probability the stock will rise or fall by 7.75%.

As 1 standard deviation represents a probability of approx. 68.28% we can say that, to a 68.28% probability the stock will be between 107.75 and 92.25 in 5 months because:

100*(1+7.75%)=107.75
and
100*(1-7.75%)=92.25

So, extending this out to 2 standard deviations:

100*(1+(2*7.75%))= 115.49
and
100*(1-(2*7.75%))= 84.54

The probability of a move in price exceeding 2 standard deviation is approx 100% - 95.45% = 4.55%

So, a 3 standard deviation move up or down would be:

100*(1+(3*7.75%))= 123.24
and
100*(1-(3*7.75%))= 76.76

As the stock price has a 99.73% probability of remaining within 3 standard deviations we can say to that probability that the price will not exceed 123.24 on the up side.

The odds of it being between 130 and 140 are therefore slim.

One of the assumptions which we have made here is that volatility is constant. In reality volatility is itself stochastic (this can be empirically observed in the volatility of the vix). So if asked a question like this you would do well to ask about the stability of volatility during the 5 month period as this would need to be factored in.

Knowing nothing about your academic background it is tricky to know what to compare the rest of the calculation to so I will coin it in financial terms.

Think of a binary range option which pays out 100% if the stock is between 130 and 140 at expiry in 5 months, but 0% if it is not.

To price such an option follow the steps below. The price of the option will be the probability of the event occurring multiplied by the payout if it does occur.



A binary (call) is priced as $*exp(-r*t)*CND(d2)

where $ is the payout amount if the contingent event (130<Price<140) occurs, exp is the number e, CND is the cumulative normal distribution and d2 is the d2 formula from Black Scholes:

d2 = (Log(S / X) + (b - v ^ 2 / 2) * T) / (v * Sqr(T))

Where Log is the natural logarithm, X is the strike price, v is sigma, T is the time to expiry and Sqr is square root.

A binary put is priced as: $*exp(-r*t)*CND(- d2)


A binary range is therefore a package of 4 binarys:

Long a call at strike 1, short a put at strike 1, long a put at strike 2 and short a call at strike 2. Where strike 1 is the lower strike and strike 2 the upper.

So: the probability of the price being between 130 and 140 in 5 months is the same % as the price of a binary range paying 100 if the market is IN the range at expiry in 5 months.

There are several ways in which you could approach this problem and I tend to think in terms of options so the binary range option analogy is the one I would find the most helpful.

So, what do you think the answer is…?

Good luck!

NQR
 
In the unlikely event that you need more information on statistics look on Wiki...

Here is the link to standard deviation, navigate from there and you will find all sorts on probability theory.

It is not hard to get but you will never get a trading job if you don't know some very basic stats like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

All the best...

NQR
 
Thanks for the help very well explained. The actual questions they asked were not very difficult just probability, expected value etc. I royally messed up one of the questions though...
 
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