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 be the number of rolls and the final sum. Using Wald's identity, find and .
(b) A trader makes independent trades with profit per trade (mean , SD ). They stop after trades, where is a stopping time with . What is the expected total profit?
(c) Why does Wald's identity *not* require to be independent of the 's? What condition does need to satisfy?
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