I have an interview for a SA 2026 DCM position and was just wondering how to go about prepping for the interview. So far, I've tried to highlight any key topics like duration, convexity, assessing creditworthiness and break them down, as well as having an opinion on the market. If anyone could guide me to specific resources or questions they had during their interviews, that would be great. Thanks!
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I interviewed for a DCM SA role last January here are my two cents
• Tell me about yourself
• Why this Firm
• Why DCM/Cap Markets
• Deal this firm worked on
• What Monetary Policy can the FED out in place and how does it affect the market
• What Macro economic factors make the FED make these decisions
• Opinion about what you think is coming with regards to the FED and rates
• Yield curve
◦ Up sloping
◦ Downward sloping
◦ Flat Line
• Where do You think the Market will be in 3/6/12 months
• Opinion on the 10 year treasury bond
• The current DCM environment.
Best of luck you got this!!
That's super helpful – thanks!
Also had a DCM super in Feb, what that comment says is spot on. I think spending the few days before really being in touch with what’s going on in the market, where interest rates are, etc is what’s important. Not a single “technical” q beyond what kind of company would use equity vs debt markets.
^This comment is spot on. If you can articulate duration and convexity even better.
I did DCM for a while. Honestly, the biggest thing is understanding the workflow and what pricing indications are. I assume you'll be working with IG US DCM clients most of which have publicly traded bonds that are issued frequently. Its nice to have an understanding of economics, yield curves, and all the jazz. But be prepared to explain how a new bond is priced. Effectively, DCM teams send frequent pricing indications pitching new bonds to its current clients. Each pitch is a deck that shows what the company's current bonds are trading at (G-spread). Then they apply it to the current day yields and calculate a hypothetical 10-year bond as follows: 10 year UST yield + G spread for company's outstanding bonds + new issue concession. The sum of those is the yield for a company's hypothetical new bond. Taking it even further, sometimes you are able to see all the debt outstanding for your clients on bloomberg terminal and you can pitch a new bond to help refinance an upcoming debt maturity wall. Truth be told, DCM is pretty easy from an analysis perspective vs M&A/Rx. All you have to do is look at current bond spreads and apply the spread to the UST yield with additional bps for market risk sentiment.
was this CIBC? if yes have you heard back for R2
No sorry this was a US BB
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