Squarepoint Capital interview questions

How Squarepoint Capital's process runs, as candidates and the firm describe it, and the questions candidates report, each with a worked solution. Free, no sign-up.

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How Squarepoint Capital interviews

Sources: Glassdoor: Squarepoint junior trader

Questions (3)

Try each one before opening the solution. Interviewers change the numbers, so learn the method.

Junior Discretionary Trader · Interview · Probability · reported by a candidate

Two people each arrive at a uniformly random time within the same hour, and each waits 15 minutes for the other.

  1. What is the probability they meet?
    Answer and worked solution

    Answer: 0.4375

    Key idea. Draw arrival times as a point in a unit square.

    1. They meet if |x − y| ≤ ¼.
    2. They miss in two corner triangles, each of area ½(¾)².
    3. P(meet) = 1 − (¾)² = 7/16.

Source: Glassdoor · Try it in the app →

Junior Shift Trader · Interview · Bayes · reported by a candidate

One coin is fair; the other lands heads with probability 2/3. You don't know which is which. Coin 1 is tossed three times and shows two heads; coin 2 is tossed three times and shows one head.

  1. What is the probability that coin 1 is the biased one?
    Answer and worked solution

    Answer: 2/3 ≈ 0.66667

    Key idea. Compare the likelihood of both observations under each hypothesis.

    1. Coin 1 biased: 3(2/3)²(1/3) × 3(1/2)³ = 4/9 × 3/8 = 1/6.
    2. Coin 1 fair: 3/8 × 3(2/3)(1/3)² = 3/8 × 2/9 = 1/12.
    3. P = (1/6)/(1/6 + 1/12) = 2/3.

Source: Glassdoor · Try it in the app →

Quant Research intern · Interview · Statistics · reported by a candidate

The sample variance s² (dividing by n − 1) is an unbiased estimator of σ². Is s an unbiased estimator of σ?

Model answer

No: it's biased low. The square root is concave, so by Jensen's inequality E[s] = E[√s²] ≤ √E[s²] = σ, with strict inequality whenever s² isn't constant. The bias shrinks as n grows (for normal data, E[s] ≈ σ(1 − 1/(4n))). Unbiasedness doesn't survive non-linear transformations; consistency does.

Source: Wall Street Oasis: Squarepoint interview reports · Try it in the app →

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