Hey, I am a 4th year economics major trying to decide what I want to do after graduation. I browsed the websites and looked at the relevant careers and would just like some additional opinions on the available designations. Is there anything I should know about that is not advertised? For example; How tough is the CFA? How usefull is the CAIA? How popular is the FRM? Continue reading
I was always frustrated trying to find a study group while I was studying for the CFA exams. It may be a little easier in the larger markets, but for those of us in smaller cities or overseas there are not always enough candidates looking to form a group. Online groups have been popping up, so I thought I would check them out and see if I could pass on some tips. Continue reading
Studying to become a Chartered Financial Analyst® usually requires lugging around a lot of books. Stalla Mobile CFA Review contains everything you need to learn every CFA topic — and can even inject some fun and excitement into the daily grind. Continue reading
I will start. Continue reading
This is the third of three articles reviewing the financial statements for the Level I curriculum of the CFA exam. Please refer to the last two articles for notes on the income statement and balance sheet. Continue reading
I recently noticed that the director of a firm (not one I work for incidentally) is misusing the designation on their website. Continue reading
We’re going to jump right into the Balance Sheet for this post but won’t be able to wrap up our review of the three financial statements until next Monday’s post on the Statement of Cash Flows. Please see last Monday’s post for a review of the income statement and some general tips. Continue reading
Ah, level I candidacy for the CFA exam. How naïve, many of you do not yet realize how intimate you need to get with corporate financial statements. Financial Reporting & Analysis (FRA) is worth around 20% of your first two CFA exams and you won’t be able to complete much of the material in equity investments without a good understanding of financial statements.
Embrace the horror! You need to be masters of those quarterly and annual reports, the sooner you realize that and work to it, the better. Continue reading
We’ve already covered a basic strategy for passing the first CFA exam in a prior post. Some of the ideas in that initial post will carry you through all three levels of the CFA exams. Below are some things that I picked up on through the three years of studying.
Taking an average of the topic area weights across all three exams (Graphic Above) brings a couple of ideas forward: Continue reading
Looking over the yearly post-exam candidate survey is always interesting. The Institute randomly samples half of the program candidates each year over different aspects of the curriculum and study resources.
About 30% of successful candidates and almost 40% of those failing the exam report that it seemed more difficult than they expected. All candidates, successful and otherwise, report using the same proportion of their preparation time for roughly the same resources. Continue reading
We covered the first three standards in the ethics material and some general comments in last Wednesday’s post. This is important stuff, so please refer back to the post. We’ll wrap up the standards this week.
Standard IV - Duties to Employers Continue reading