Fixed income sales and trading
The Fixed Income Interview, desk by desk.
Free, worked guides to the rates, credit and securitized desks: what each one trades, how the interview tests it, and what the seat pays. This is the fixed income half of the floor, not FX or commodities.
Written and edited by Tobias Wren. How these guides are made.
The guides
The guides describe desks at these banks
The three guides
Everything a fixed income interview tests, in three guides.
Start anywhere. Each guide is a complete, worked map of one part of the fixed income floor: what a desk trades, how the interview tests it, and what to say when it does.
The Desks
Rates, repo, credit, high yield, distressed, CLOs, securitized, EM
What each desk on the fixed income floor trades, how it makes money and what it wants from a junior: one guide per desk, with the arithmetic shown.
In this guide
The Interview
Bond math, markets, credit analysis, the superday
The questions a fixed income interview actually asks, desk by desk, with the answers worked through, and how the process runs from application to superday.
In this guide
Money & Career
Pay by desk and level, exits, the day itself
What a fixed income seat pays at each level and in each city, where each desk leads, and what a day on a trading floor is really like.
In this guide
Latest guides
Fresh from the desk
- The Desks
Fixed Income Trading Desks: What Each One Trades and How It Earns
Sep 2026 · 20 min readRead - The Interview
Fixed Income Interview Questions: Worked Answers by Desk and Family
Sep 2026 · 21 min readRead - Money & Career
Fixed Income Trader Salary: Base Pay, Bonus Pools and Deferral (2026)
Sep 2026 · 20 min readRead - The Interview
Bond Math Interview Questions: The Forward-Rate Arbitrage Question, Solved
Sep 2026 · 21 min readRead - The Desks
CLO Trading (Collateralized Loan Obligations): How the Tranches Pay
Sep 2026 · 20 min readRead - The Interview
Credit Analysis Interview Questions: One Company, Priced Two Ways
Sep 2026 · 19 min readRead
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Not sure where you stand?
Take the interview readiness check: 18 questions across the 3 areas a fixed income interview actually tests. Then run real numbers through the bond calculator, the same price, yield and duration arithmetic an interviewer asks for.
FAQ
Fixed income interview FAQ
- What does a fixed income interview actually test?
- Whether you can price a bond and read a curve, not recite vocabulary about them. Expect a bond math question worked out loud (price, yield, duration, DV01), a market view question on where yields go next and why, and a fit round built around why this desk over the others. The technical bar shifts with the desk: rates leans on curve mechanics, credit leans on spread and default risk, securitized leans on prepayment. See the question families by desk.
- What is the difference between the rates, credit and securitized desks?
- What they trade and what actually moves the price. Rates trades government bonds and swaps, where the risk is almost entirely the path of interest rates. Credit trades corporate bonds, where the price also depends on whether the company pays you back. Securitized trades mortgage and asset pools, where prepayment behavior changes the cash flows the bond was priced against. Each one interviews differently because each one is testing a different kind of judgment. Read what each desk actually does.
- Is fixed income the same thing as FICC?
- No, and interviewers notice when a candidate treats them as the same thing. Fixed income is one piece of FICC, the way most banks group the business, and it is the rates, credit and securitized piece specifically. That narrower slice is what this site covers.
- How much does a fixed income trader get paid?
- It depends on the desk and the city more than most candidates expect. Pay is a base salary plus a bonus that tracks the desk’s own revenue, so a strong year on a flow credit desk and a strong year on a securitized desk can pay very differently even at the same level. See pay by desk and level.
- How do I break into fixed income sales and trading?
- Through the same cycle as the rest of sales and trading: a summer internship that converts into a full-time offer, recruited well over a year ahead of the start date at the largest banks. Why fixed income specifically, rather than equities, is its own question and worth answering properly before the interview does it for you. Why fixed income, answered properly.
Prep like you’ve already sat on the desk.
Start with The Desks, then see exactly where you stand.