I’m looking for some advice regarding studying for level 2 Financial Reporting Analysis. I recently passed level 1 with very little effort put into FRA, due to running out of time before the exam. I guess you could say it was a risk that payed off. I have a finance/economics background from university and managed to score >70% for everything bar economics (50-70, ironic seeing as this was my major) and FRA <50%. I’m now about to start L2 studies so my question is: do you think it’s necessary for me to go over everything in L1 FRA again before I start L2. It’s probably an obvious answer seeing as it’s a heavily weighted subject and I have little accounting background but any advice on studying FRA in L2 would be appreciated.
Be sure you know, inside and out, intercorporate investments, pensions, and multi-national operations. These three topics can be tough to many and take a LOT of practice to get on top of. If you signed up with Schweser, be sure to watch the videos by Andy Holmes. He’s awesome. It won’t be necessary to go over L1 FRA. Everything you need to know for L2 FRA is in the L2 curriculum. Search the forum, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of threads covering those three major portions of FRA.
No need to go back to L1. Agree w/ the above poster that FRA for L2 is really dominated by those 3 biggies: pension accounting, intercorporate investments and currency translation. They dive into a few L1 topics a little deeper like accounting for LIFO reserves, HTM vs AFS vs HFS, lease accounting, and writing down assets.
But, for the most part, if you read through the 3 biggies over and over till you have them nailed, you’re proabaly in good shape on FRA.
I was in the same boat, I disliked FRA in level 1 and <50’d it. I don’t remember the L1 test too well but L2 went much better FRA wise (despite still disliking it) - i found it more ‘fair’ and i’m guessing other writers did too.
fair as in, there are a handful of major FRA topics, and a handful of FRA item sets on the exam
unfair (pm/alt/quant) as in there are multiple topics in each, and minimal item sets on each on the exam, so a higher likelihood of not being tested on stuff you’ve studied.
…running on no sleep so hopefully this makes a smidgen of sense.
Thank you all for your advice, very helpful. That makes me less nervous about my performance in L1 FRA and I can concentrante fully on L2. Now I just have to start.