Corporate Actions Entitlements
Compute dividend, split, bonus and rights entitlements against a position file, with fractional handling and exception flags.
[TO] role track
Trade lifecycle, reconciliations and blotter work as they appear in ops take-homes.
Candidates for trade support, middle office and operations analyst roles.
01 · concepts
Concise, interview-relevant theory the maths and intuition you are expected to reason from, not textbook length.
From execution to settlement every stage a trade passes through and where it can break.
How settlement works, why trades fail, and how operations resolves fails.
Matching internal records against external sources and investigating the differences.
How PnL is produced and checked in the middle office, and what drives daily moves.
02 · coding guides
Practical, implementation-oriented guides for the tools each desk uses, with patterns you can apply directly.
Reliable spreadsheet workflows for blotters, recs and checks that scale.
Querying trade, settlement and reference data to answer operational questions.
Using pandas to match two records sets and surface differences quickly.
The shell tooling that makes log and file investigation fast.
03 · take-home tasks
Downloadable, recruiter-style exercises with mark schemes the core of DeskPrep.
Complete booking fields and flag rows that fail validation against the rules provided.
Match internal and broker records, classify the breaks and propose a resolution.
Write a query set that reports settlement status and isolates failing trades.
Parse settlement logs with shell tooling to extract failed trades and summarise reasons.
Compute dividend, split, bonus and rights entitlements against a position file, with fractional handling and exception flags.
Reconcile an internal cash ledger to the nostro statement, classify the cash-specific breaks and tie out to the balance difference.
Every task includes a model solution and points-based mark scheme · unlocked with the Trading Ops pack
Short interview screens you answer in the browser. Objective questions are auto-graded with instant feedback; judgement items come with a mark scheme so you know exactly where you stand.
Classify breaks, value them, order the trade lifecycle, compute settlement dates and fail penalties, and clean a blotter the objective core of an ops take-home.
Explain the day's move: sensitivity PnL, the attribution bridge, the unexplained residual, and flash vs actual middle-office product control in numbers.
Spot the bad rows in a messy trade blotter, compute the clean totals, and know the rules the attention-to-detail ops test in depth.
Classify events, compute dividend, split, bonus and rights entitlements, and apply ex-date and election rules the everyday accuracy an asset-servicing seat is screened on.
Variation and initial margin, margin calls, collateral haircuts, eligibility and netting the daily collateral-ops arithmetic, done to the pound.
The ops/data Python round reconciliation, settlement dates, blotter validation, FIFO PnL and FIX parsing, run and graded in the browser.
04 · interview playbook
What interviewers actually test, the question styles to expect, common mistakes, and how to structure strong answers.
How operations interviews probe your understanding of process and controls.
The accuracy checks ops interviews use and how to pass them calmly.
Demonstrating structured investigation logic on a break or fail.