IMC Trading Interview Questions
The real IMC Trading quant-interview problems candidates report — coding, probability and expected value — each with a full worked solution.
Inside the IMC Trading interview
IMC Trading is a global proprietary options market maker that quotes two-sided markets across exchanges, so its interviews reward fast, accurate probability and expected-value reasoning, sharp mental math, and clean algorithmic coding under time pressure.
What they test
The core is probability and expectation — coin-flip and dice games, conditional updates, and EV-of-a-bet questions you must price out loud in seconds. Around it sit a block of algorithmic coding problems (grids, BFS/DFS, stacks, selection) for the SWE-flavored loops, plus combinatorics and game theory brain-teasers and a small market-making core (quoting bid-ask spreads, sizing bets).
The recurring shapes
Expect "keep or play" stopping decisions on a coin or card game, expected rolls / expected steps on dice and random walks, conditional probability with sequential information, and Kelly / bankroll sizing when you have an edge. The coding side leans on grids and graphs — islands, shortest paths, connectivity — and stack/array manipulation.
How to approach
Set up the state and the recursion first, then compute — most EV questions collapse to a one-line indifference equation or a geometric series. Quote a number, state your assumptions, and be ready to defend it. For the trading game, anchor on fair value and quote a tight, defensible bid-ask spread around it.
The mix leans medium, with a spread of quick easy mental-math warm-ups and a tail of hard game-theory and coding problems.
IMC Trading coding questions (25)
- Largest Square Subgrid With Every Block Under a Budget
- Chain of Command
- Waste Reduction
- Adding Stack
- Grid Exploration
- River Crossing
- Congested Mountain Trail
- Find Path
- Knights Path
- Real Estate Valuation with Outlier Filtering
- Combination Sum
- Tree Traversal and Merging
- Stack with O(1) Threshold Removals
- BFS on a Grid with Alternating Obstacles
- Avoiding the Monsters
- Hikers Meeting on a One-Lane Trail
- Simulating Connectivity of a Random Graph
- Hikers Passing on a Narrow Trail
- Number of Islands in a Grid
- Median-of-Medians Selection (BFPRT)
- Maximum Profit with Two Transactions
- Minimum-Length Subarray With Sum at Least S
- Online Top-K Sum with Arbitrary Deletes
- Linear Interpolation from Sorted Pairs
- Longest Consecutive-Increasing Path in a Grid
IMC Trading probability questions (17)
- How Many Green Gloves in the Box?
- Valid Range for a Three-Outcome Probability
- Probability the Bowl is Empty When the Last Orange is Drawn
- Random Walk on a Telephone Pad: Divisibility by 2
- Conditional Probability of Winning on the First Flip
- Probability a Random Graph Is Connected
- Knights, Knaves, and a Probability Twist
- Prize Wheel Game Show
- Matching Royals: Each Player Gets One of Each Rank
- Bayesian Updating with Sequential Trade Direction
- Playing a Coin Flip With a Slight Edge
- Beer Pong Grid Elimination
- All Evens Before Any Odd on a Fair Die
- Minimum Probability a Chip Is Defective
- Average of Three Numbers from 1 to 20
- Two-Stage Conditional Dice Roll
- Bayesian Disease Testing with Two Independent Tests
IMC Trading expected value questions (11)
- Random Walk on a Table -- Expected Steps to Fall Off
- Expected Extinction Time of a Dying Population
- Expected Value of a Two-Outcome Payoff
- Keep or Play: Optimal Replay in a Coin-Flipping Game
- Expected Rolls to See an Odd Number
- Expected Value of a Coin Flip Game
- Guessing the Suit: An Expected-Value Card Game
- Expected Rolls Until an Odd Number
- Half-Kelly Betting With Equal Wins and Losses
- Fruit Drawing Game Expected Payoff
- Fair Value of Land with Uncertain Payoff
IMC Trading combinatorics questions (8)
IMC Trading game theory questions (7)
IMC Trading optimization questions (4)
IMC Trading statistics questions (3)
IMC Trading brain teasers questions (2)
IMC Trading stochastic processes questions (2)
IMC Trading finance questions (1)
IMC Trading options pricing questions (1)
IMC Trading machine learning questions (1)
IMC Trading market microstructure questions (1)
IMC Trading time series questions (1)
IMC Trading regression questions (1)
IMC Trading interview FAQ
What kind of questions does IMC Trading ask in quant interviews?
Candidates most often report coding, probability and expected value questions. This page collects 85 of them, 59 stamped with the month they were last reported — each with a full worked solution.
How hard are IMC Trading interview questions?
The set spans 28 easy, 42 medium and 15 hard problems. Most sit at medium difficulty — solvable in a few minutes with clean reasoning — with a harder tail that rewards knowing the canonical tricks.
How do I prepare for the IMC Trading quant interview?
Work through this set by topic (use the sidebar), starting from your weakest area. 14 problems are free to open with their full solution, so you can judge the quality before anything else. Then walk the full IMC Trading interview guide for the round-by-round funnel and the online assessment.
Are these the actual IMC Trading interview questions?
They are built from candidate-reported IMC Trading questions. We rewrite each prompt for clarity and author the worked solutions ourselves — we don't claim the wording is verbatim, and we never invent questions or recycle generic lists. 59 of 85 carry the month they were last reported.