Morgan Stanley Interview Questions
A strats/QR practice set spanning derivatives pricing, stochastic calculus and Brownian motion, plus probability, expectation and statistics brain-teasers.
Inside the Morgan Stanley interview
Morgan Stanley hires quant strategists and quant researchers across its strats and modeling desks, where interviews test whether you can move fluently between derivatives pricing, stochastic calculus, and clean probability — the math that underpins a sell-side modeling role.
What they test
The recurring core is options and rates pricing — Black-Scholes from a risk-neutral expectation, binomial trees, put-call parity, and bond duration/convexity — sitting on a stochastic-process foundation of Brownian motion, Ito's lemma, martingales, and Markov chains. Around that desk-math is a steady layer of probability, expectation, and statistics brain-teasers used to probe raw quantitative reasoning.
The recurring shapes
Expect to price a derivative as a discounted risk-neutral expectation, prove a process is a martingale, or push a function of Brownian motion through Ito. The classic move is recognizing that an option value is an expectation under the risk-neutral measure and that the drift gets replaced by the risk-free rate.
How to approach
State your assumptions out loud (measure, dynamics, independence), reach for the canonical tool — Ito, Girsanov, optional stopping, or Bayes — and only then compute. On the brain-teasers (German tank, secretary problem, coupon collector), set up the expectation cleanly before grinding the algebra; interviewers reward structure over speed.
The mix leans medium with a strong hard tail in pricing and stochastic calculus, plus a handful of easy probability warm-ups.
Morgan Stanley probability questions (7)
Morgan Stanley stochastic processes questions (6)
Morgan Stanley options pricing questions (5)
Morgan Stanley expected value questions (4)
Morgan Stanley regression questions (1)
Morgan Stanley brain teasers questions (1)
Morgan Stanley statistics questions (1)
Morgan Stanley interview FAQ
What kind of questions does Morgan Stanley ask in quant interviews?
Candidates most often report probability, stochastic processes and options pricing questions. This page collects 25 of them, 5 stamped with the month they were last reported — each with a full worked solution.
How hard are Morgan Stanley interview questions?
The set spans 9 easy, 13 medium and 3 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 Morgan Stanley quant interview?
Work through this set by topic (use the sidebar), starting from your weakest area. 10 problems are free to open with their full solution, so you can judge the quality before anything else. Then broaden out with the related firms below — the question families overlap heavily.
Are these the actual Morgan Stanley interview questions?
They are built from candidate-reported Morgan Stanley 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. 5 of 25 carry the month they were last reported.