# Fixed Income Interview Prep

> Desk-by-desk guides to fixed income sales and trading: the rates, credit and securitized desks, the interview, and what the job pays.

Desk-by-desk guides to fixed income sales and trading, for candidates interviewing for a seat
and for anyone learning how the rates, credit and securitized desks actually work. Each guide
names its author, lists its sources with dates, and says plainly where a figure could not be
confirmed rather than estimating it. Currencies and commodities are out of scope; this site
covers the fixed income half of the floor only.

- [Home](https://fixedincomeinterview.com)
- [All guides](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/guides)
- [All tools](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/tools)

## Fixed Income Trading Desks

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.

- [Fixed Income Trading Desks](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/fixed-income-trading-desks)
- [CLO Trading (Collateralized Loan Obligations): How the Tranches Pay](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/clo-trading): Leveraged loans pooled into tranches from AAA to equity, a waterfall that pays senior debt first, and a coverage test that diverts cash when it fails. Here is the desk in real numbers, and the 2008 record a lot of interview prep still gets backwards.
- [Credit Trading Desk: How IG Spreads, CS01 and the CDS Basis Work](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/credit-trading): The credit desk makes markets in investment grade corporate bonds, the second-largest US bond market after Treasuries. Here is who it trades with, how it earns, how screens and a 15-minute public tape changed it, and three worked examples with the arithmetic shown.
- [Distressed Debt Trading Desk: How the Recovery Waterfall Works](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/distressed-debt-trading): A bank's distressed desk makes markets in bonds, loans and bankruptcy trade claims once a credit stops performing. Here is how it earns, the Chapter 11 rules that decide who gets paid, a recovery waterfall worked down to a bond price, and what the interview tests.
- [Emerging Markets Credit: Hard Currency, Local Currency and Defaults](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/emerging-markets-credit): Sovereign, quasi-sovereign and corporate debt, priced in dollars or in the issuer's own currency, with a market that has moved on from the instrument most prep guides still teach.
- [High Yield Trading Desk: How Yield to Worst Beats Yield to Maturity](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/high-yield-trading): Most high yield bonds can be called away early, so the yield that matters is the worst case, not the one printed on the label. Here is the desk in real numbers, a callable bond worked twice, and what the interview actually tests.
- [Rates Trading Desk: How Steepeners, Carry and Swap Spreads Work](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/rates-trading): The rates desk trades the shape of the yield curve itself: government bonds, swaps and swaptions, priced off SOFR rather than LIBOR since 2023. Here is the desk in real numbers, the arithmetic behind its trades, and what the interview actually tests.
- [Repo Trading Desk: How Haircuts, Specials and the Basis Trade Work](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/repo-trading): The repo desk lends and borrows cash against Treasury collateral, overnight and by the trillion. Here is a real trade worked twice, why a security on special pays less, and how balance sheet has become the desk's scarce resource.
- [Securitized Products: How the TBA Market and Negative Convexity Work](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/securitized-products): Agency and non-agency mortgage bonds, asset-backed securities, and the forward market that ties them together, with the arithmetic behind the desk's defining risk.

## Fixed Income Interview Questions

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.

- [Fixed Income Interview Questions](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/fixed-income-interview-questions)
- [Bond Math Interview Questions: The Forward-Rate Arbitrage Question, Solved](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/bond-math-interview-questions): The arithmetic a fixed income interview actually tests, worked step by step: price and yield, duration, DV01, convexity, and the two questions that trip up almost everyone.
- [Credit Analysis Interview Questions: One Company, Priced Two Ways](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/credit-analysis-interview-questions): Leverage, coverage, the rating-agency grid, covenants and recovery, all worked on one invented company, then a relative value question answered two different ways.
- [Sales and Trading Internship: The Summer Analyst Calendar, Bank by Bank](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/sales-and-trading-internship): Postings for a summer 2027 internship in New York went up in December 2025, eighteen months ahead. The programs at ten dealer banks by their own names, the US, UK and Asia calendars, and the year before you apply.
- [Sales and Trading Superday: Every Stage From Application to Offer](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/sales-and-trading-superday): No two dealer banks describe the same process, and some run a different one in each region. The stages from online test to final round, what each one tests, and how the recorded video interview works.
- [Sales and Trading Technical Questions: Dice, the Fed and a Trade Pitch](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/sales-and-trading-technical-questions): The S&T technical round beyond bond math: probability and brain teasers answered two ways, mental math with the method shown, a real Fed meeting read maturity by maturity, and a trade pitch sized in DV01 with the risk that would sink it.
- [Why Fixed Income: The Interview Answer That Changes by Desk](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/why-fixed-income): Interviewers ask it on every fixed income desk, and the templated answers online do not survive a follow-up question.

## Fixed Income Trader Salary and Career

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.

- [Fixed Income Trader Salary and Career](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/fixed-income-trader-salary)
- [Day in the Life of a Fixed Income Trader: Rates, Credit and Mortgages](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/day-in-the-life-fixed-income-trader): Three desks, one day: what a junior does from the overnight handoff to the end-of-day P&L on the rates, credit and securitized desks, the words the floor never explains, and the hours as people on the desk describe them.
- [Fixed Income Exit Opportunities: Where Each Desk Leads and What It Takes](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/fixed-income-exit-opportunities): A rates trader and a CLO trader can sit on the same floor and leave for completely different seats, because each desk builds a different skill. Here is where every fixed income desk tends to lead, what the next employer screens for, and how to keep a good exit open from the first year.
- [Fixed Income Sales: The Client Seat, Its Interview and the Bond Pitch](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/fixed-income-sales): Three different jobs share the word sales on a bond floor. What each one does, how a desk's axes reach its clients, how the sales interview differs from a trading one, and a worked pitch on the 10-year Treasury note.

## Tools

- [Bond calculator](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/tools/bond-calculator)
- [Interview readiness check](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/tools/interview-readiness)

## About

- [About](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/about)
- [Editorial standards](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/editorial-standards)
- [Author](https://fixedincomeinterview.com/authors/tobias-wren)