Model and measure trading transaction costs

Q: Model and measure trading transaction costs

This is a Analytics & Experimentation interview question from Graham Capital for Software Engineer roles. View the full question and solution on PracHub.

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Question

Modeling and Incorporating Transaction Costs in an Event-Driven Trading Strategy

Context

You are designing an event-driven trading strategy that reacts to news or microstructure signals and must execute quickly. Explain how you will model, estimate, and incorporate transaction costs so that backtests, sizing, and live trading are realistic.

Tasks

Decompose transaction costs and describe how to model each component:
- Commissions and fees
- Bid–ask spread
- Slippage (incl. decision-to-execution latency)
- Market impact (temporary and permanent)
Explain ex-ante (pre-trade) versus ex-post (post-trade) estimation and how to calibrate models.
Show how to incorporate costs into:
- Backtests and execution simulation
- Position sizing and trading thresholds
- Net performance metrics and capacity analysis
Describe robustness checks across liquidity and latency scenarios, including stress tests and sensitivity analyses.

Model and measure trading transaction costs

Modeling and Incorporating Transaction Costs in an Event-Driven Trading Strategy

Context

Tasks

Solution

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