Volume

90% of the material is not difficult at all (given we all work in this industry). This exam is just an exercise of memorizing and learning a sickening amount of material. CFAi knows candidates focus on big picture topics and glance over smaller readings. Honestly, how many of you can differentiate between a price driven and order driven market? Not many, I guarantee. But I bet 95% of us know how to calculate OAS…and guess what CFAi loves to test – minutia. Passing this exam DEFINITELY has an element of luck…a significant portion imo. Had a great conversation with my boss who received the charter ~7 yrs ago and keeps up with the CBOK and says ‘the exam is almost not even fair.’ 6 weeks left…Strength and Honour.

i agree. nothing in level 2 is more conceptually difficult than an average university course. it’s the volume that makes you feel stupid (without looking it up) how many people know what the molodovsky effect is? it’s like a single line in schweser

slash. killing me. what is the molodovsky effect? haven’t even seen it.

Slash Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i agree. nothing in level 2 is more conceptually > difficult than an average university course. it’s > the volume that makes you feel stupid > > (without looking it up) how many people know what > the molodovsky effect is? it’s like a single line > in schweser it has to do with normalizing EPS (the motivation behind it)

I think its that firms have high P/E’s in when the business cycle is in a trough and low P/E’s when business cycle in at its peak

why did i quote myself? haha cfasf1, P/E ratios are high at the bottom of the business cycle (low earnings) and low at the top of the cycle (high earnings). this is the molodovsky effect. hence the need to normalize it

I just finished my first read through on Sunday and was explaining the feeling I have to my girlfriend, this is the analogy I used: It’s like when you have your arms full of laundry and you drop a sock, bend over and pick it up, only to drop another sock, and it just keeps going like that. It seems everytime you have a handle on a portion of the curriculum, somebody asks a simple question and just as you’re thinking ‘duh, that’s level I stuff’ you realize you can’t remember the answer. Additionally, I believe that anyone can pass or fail on any given day and that while studying impacts probabilities, in the end, they are just that, probabilities. Alot of the test comes down to whether each candidate was asked the right questions.

This is perfect ^.

Black Swan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I just finished my first read through on Sunday > and was explaining the feeling I have to my > girlfriend, this is the analogy I used: > > It’s like when you have your arms full of laundry > and you drop a sock, bend over and pick it up, > only to drop another sock, and it just keeps going > like that. It seems everytime you have a handle > on a portion of the curriculum, somebody asks a > simple question and just as you’re thinking ‘duh, > that’s level I stuff’ you realize you can’t > remember the answer. > > Additionally, I believe that anyone can pass or > fail on any given day and that while studying > impacts probabilities, in the end, they are just > that, probabilities. Alot of the test comes down > to whether each candidate was asked the right > questions. R-SQUARED = 1.0 :slight_smile:

i’m freaking sitting on the floor barefoot with socks strewn all around me. what a disaster. molodovsky.

Every time I think of my knowledge for this exam I picture a house of cards. The whole thing is shaking and it is ready to go at any time. molodovsky.

I imagine myself being put in a washer for 3 hrs (AM session) and then put in the drier for next 3 hrs (PM session) just to come out all shrunken after the whirling and twisting. molodovsky.

Dinesh, you are going to put me out of a job with all your jokes man!

Yeah, it seems that with 20 item sets and 18 SS (plus if you take into account the fact that equity and FSA will have over 3 item sets each)… there will definitely be alot of material not tested. But you’ve got to know everything well in order to haver a chance of passing. Molodovsky.

Well, thanks to this thread, Molodovski is the one thing I WILL freaking know on exam day. That pretty much ensures that it won’t be tested. Um, molodovsky.

Another concept similar to the molodovsky effect in terms of minutia that may surface in econ. The J-Curve Effect. I believe its covered by CFAI in the ICAPM section of PM.

I took the 2006 exam this last weekend for my first practice test. There will be a handful of questions that will cause one to scratch his head. Oh well. Still, the majority of the exam (based on 2006 and my unfortunate experience with 2007) is on subjects you all know about. My plan is no nail the big sfuff and not worry about the M word and the J word. The wierd stuff is going to be there; answer C and move on.

was that a schweser book 7 test? i’ve done several of the vignettes out of the text but don’t think all of them are in the book…

SERIOULY, WHAT IS J-CURVE EFFECT?

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jcurve.asp A theory stating that a country’s trade deficit will worsen initially after the depreciation of its currency because higher prices on foreign imports will be greater than the reduced volume of imports. - J