The 2027 Commercial and Investment Bank Markets Summer Analyst Program at J.P. Morgan, the Hong Kong Research role, opens with a recorded HireVue before a human joins the process, and it cuts a lot of people early. The ones who clear it usually practiced the real questions instead of improvising into a webcam. This interview is a single question, Question 1 of 1, with roughly three minutes of prep and two minutes to speak. It reads like a story about two trading strategies, but it is really a test of whether you trust a headline number or check it.
Here is the exact wording:
Scenario: You're joining an equities execution team evaluating two strategies
· Strategy 1: wins about 80% of trades, averages +$0.05 per share on winners, -$0.35 per share on losers. Typically ~20 trades/day in normal conditions.
· Strategy 2: wins about 38% of trades, averages +$0.22 per share on winners, -$0.10 per share on losers. Typically ~8 trades/day. Same cost profile as above.
Question: Which strategy is more likely to have a positive average outcome per trade before costs and why?
The 80% win rate is bait. It is there so you will pick Strategy 1 on instinct. But how often you win says nothing about how much you win, and the way to settle it is the expected value: probability of each outcome times the payout of that outcome, added together. Run it and Strategy 1 turns out to lose money on average.
Where candidates go wrong
- Choosing Strategy 1 on the win rate. Eighty percent feels safe, and that feeling is the whole trap. Frequency of winning is not the same as expectancy.
- Talking instead of calculating. This question is answered with two short sums. Skip them and you have avoided the actual task.
- Underweighting the loss size. A thirty five cent loser against a five cent winner is a seven to one payoff working against you. That asymmetry is the point.
- Answering per day when it asks per trade. The trades per day numbers are there to distract from the per trade expectancy the question actually wants.
- Reading past before costs. The prompt says before costs deliberately. Costs only shrink a slim edge, which matters when one strategy is barely positive.
- Ending on a feeling. Calling one steadier or one riskier is not a conclusion. State the expected value and let the number decide.
What a strong answer does
A strong answer does the math on the spot. For Strategy 1, multiply 0.80 by the five cent win and 0.20 by the thirty five cent loss: four cents against seven cents, so minus three cents per share. For Strategy 2, multiply 0.38 by the twenty two cent win and 0.62 by the ten cent loss: about 8.4 cents against 6.2 cents, so roughly plus two cents per share. Strategy 2 is the one with a positive average outcome per trade, and it gets there while winning less than four trades in ten.
Then land the reasoning. Strategy 1 is a classic high hit rate with a hidden tail: many tiny wins and an occasional loss seven times larger, so the few losers erase all the frequent winners and then some. Strategy 2 is the mirror image, a lower hit rate but winners that outsize the losers, and that favorable payoff ratio is what pushes its expectancy positive. The line a trader will respect is that expected value weighs probability against payoff on both sides at once, so a strategy can win most of the time and still be a net drain. Close on the habit it reveals: you judge a strategy by its expectancy, not its win rate, and you note that once real costs come out, Strategy 2's small positive edge is the one still standing.
Get the ones for your role
This is the whole interview, one question, and it favors people who check the number rather than trust the story the number is wrapped in. OfferTutoring keeps the full J.P. Morgan Markets question set if you want the real prompts for the Sales and Trading roles in front of you before you record.
