NISM Series IV Previous Year Papers
No official past paper exists for Series IV. The published format and the 9-chapter curriculum give you what one would have.
NISM does not publish previous year papers for Series IV, the Interest Rate Derivatives Certification Examination. The exam runs on demand all year at test centres, and each candidate's paper is drawn from a question bank that NISM's own policy calls confidential. There is no annual paper to release, so a file titled as the 2024 or 2025 Series IV paper is not an official document.
What NISM does publish is enough to build your own: the paper's structure, a 9-chapter curriculum with lettered sub-topics, and a free workbook with chapter-end questions. This page shows how to use them.
About the PDFs sold as real Series IV papers
Files shared as leaked or memory-based Series IV papers are recollections at best, with no answer key you can trust. Do not pay for one.
What the Series IV paper looks like
Every fact below is from NISM's exam page.
| Item | Series IV |
|---|---|
| Questions | 100 multiple-choice questions, 1 mark each |
| Total marks | 100 |
| Duration | 2 hours |
| Pass mark | 60 out of 100 (60%) |
| Wrong answer | 0.25 mark deducted (25% of the question's marks) |
| Where | NISM test centre, slot of your choice, no fixed exam date |
| Syllabus | 9 chapters on NISM's curriculum page, from the bond market to the code of conduct |
The question each chapter produces
NISM publishes no chapter weightage, so ignore any site that prints one. What you can predict is the shape of the question, from the lettered sub-topics under each chapter on the curriculum page.
- check_circleChapter I, Interest Rate, Interest Rate Instruments and Fixed Income Market: bond arithmetic. Accrued interest, current yield versus yield to maturity, spot rate, bond price from cash flows, duration. The longest chapter, with 14 sub-topics, and the source of most sums.
- check_circleChapter II, Interest Rate Derivatives: definitions and contract mechanics. OTC versus exchange traded, participants, the underlying, the futures payoff, and what one tick does to the contract value.
- check_circleChapter III, Exchange Traded Interest Rate Options: option vocabulary. Call or put, moneyness, European versus American style, what a Greek measures, implied volatility, and the payoff diagram of a long or short position.
- check_circleChapter IV, Strategies: a position is described and you say whether it is a hedge, a speculation, a spread or an arbitrage, then work out the gain or loss.
- check_circleChapter V, Trading Mechanism: order types, order routing, price limits and circuit filters, trading costs.
- check_circleChapter VI, Clearing, Settlement and Risk Management: who does what and when. Settlement obligations, position limits, margins, physical delivery, the Core Settlement Guarantee Fund and interoperability.
- check_circleChapter VII, Regulatory Framework: which Act, committee, regulator or body governs a given point. SC(R)A 1956, the RBI-SEBI Standing Technical Committee, RBI and SEBI guidelines and the role of FIMMDA each produce a question.
- check_circleChapter VIII, Accounting and Taxation: how a contract is booked and how its gain is taxed. Two sub-topics, easy marks.
- check_circleChapter IX, Code of Conduct and Investor Protection: scenario questions on the broker code of conduct, grievance redressal, online dispute resolution, the Investor Protection Fund, power of attorney versus DDPI, risk disclosure and KYC.
Free account, this exam preselected.
How NISM Series IV tests this material
The first trap is direction. Bond prices and yields move opposite ways, so a question that says rates rose and asks what happened to the futures price, or to a long position, is answered wrongly by anyone who thinks in equity terms.
The second trap is the numerical. Chapters I to IV carry calculations: accrued interest, yield, duration, the futures price, the tick value and the profit or loss on a position. The options are near-neighbours: the right answer, one with the sign reversed, one with the day count or lot size wrong, and an invention.
The third trap is the segment itself. Trading members deal in interest rate derivatives through the currency derivatives segment, and both the RBI and SEBI issue guidelines. Questions on who regulates what and who may participate catch candidates who assume equity derivatives rules apply.
At 0.25 off per wrong answer, four failed guesses cost a full mark. The exam-pattern page works the arithmetic in full.
How to practise without past papers
A past paper would give you the format, the style and a score. You can build all three.
- 1
Turn the curriculum into a question list
Write one question for every lettered sub-topic under every chapter on NISM's curriculum page. Chapter I alone gives you fourteen, chapter VI thirteen.
- 2
Use the workbook's own questions first
NISM's FAQ for this series points candidates to the chapter-end sample questions and worked examples in the workbook. Do every one before touching third-party sets.
- 3
Redo every sum with the rate moved the other way
When you finish a futures or hedging example where yields rise, redo it with yields falling. If your answer does not flip sign cleanly, you learned the example, not the concept.
- 4
Sit timed sets scored at the real penalty
A practice set is useful only if it is 100 questions in 2 hours, scored 1 mark right and 0.25 off wrong. Treat 60 marks as the line and aim for a margin above it.
- 5
Fix the chapter, not the question
Group your wrong answers by chapter. Two or more misses in one chapter means re-reading that chapter.
Checking a third-party question set
Compare a set's chapter names with the nine on NISM's curriculum page. A set with five chapters, or one that never mentions options, interoperability or DDPI, was written against an older syllabus. The study-material page lists what to read alongside the workbook.
FAQs
Where can I download NISM Series IV previous year question papers?expand_more
Nowhere official. NISM does not release past papers or answer keys for any certification, including Series IV. Its re-evaluation policy says questions and answers are never disclosed because the question bank is confidential.
Does NISM repeat questions in the interest rate derivatives exam?expand_more
Each paper is drawn from a question bank, so two candidates on the same day can see different questions. Topics repeat because the curriculum is fixed; wording and numbers do not.
Is the NISM Series IV exam easy?expand_more
It is a standard-length NISM paper: 100 questions in 2 hours with 0.25 negative marking and a 60% pass mark. What makes it harder than it looks is chapter I, where bond pricing, yield and duration need practice on paper.
What are the four types of derivatives the exam asks about?expand_more
Forwards, futures, options and swaps. Chapter II lists the products in the derivatives market and then narrows to exchange traded interest rate futures; chapter III adds options. A typical question gives a feature, such as standardised terms or a daily margin, and asks which type it describes.
Next steps
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