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TL;DR

Wald's Identity: Expected Sums at Random Stopping Times: A canonical quantitative trading interview question at olympiad difficulty. Commonly asked at Jane Street, Two Sigma, DE Shaw, Citadel, HRT.

By Valenke Exam Prep Team·Last updated 2026-06-01
olympiadExpected Value & Variance

Wald's Identity: Expected Sums at Random Stopping Times

Asked at: Jane Street, Two Sigma, DE Shaw, Citadel, HRT

Problem
(a) A die is rolled repeatedly. You stop when the cumulative sum first exceeds 100. Let NN be the number of rolls and SNS_N the final sum. Using Wald's identity, find E[SN]E[S_N] and E[N]E[N]. (b) A trader makes independent trades with profit per trade XiN(2,100)X_i \sim N(2, 100) (mean $2\$2, SD $10\$10). They stop after NN trades, where NN is a stopping time with E[N]=50E[N] = 50. What is the expected total profit? (c) Why does Wald's identity *not* require NN to be independent of the XiX_i's? What condition does NN need to satisfy?

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