Level 2, feedback?

Any comments on the exam in general, without saying anything?

Friend of mine sat today. He has only said that the grade of details regarding questions was higher than in the previous exam.

I sat last week and can agree on the grade of details.

The essay questions were killing me.

Thank for sharing!

Did you use Schweser? Do you advice to use official books from CAIA?

No Schweser or Uppermark, only CAIA books. Read everything. Quite a lot to remember.

If I should dump I will try Schweser for retake. However, passed with big margin Level 1 with CAIA books only.

I sat the exam this morning and as someone who had been scoring over 90% in Uppermark questions, which I did daily for over 30 days, I was shocked at the difficulty. In my case, one part of the test shocked me in terms of the obscure details it delved into.

Having read the original books and then wiping the floor with Uppermark, I did not anticipate this degree of difficulty. PS I scored 83% in the CAIA website mock exam & here I am wondering if I made it in the real world. :o

By the way: I would say that the general detail grade is extremely high in L2. It’s my third attempt to pass. First time I really messed up, did not do enough due to workload and birth of my son (yes I know, these are no excuses). Second time I must have been very close to pass but didn’t work either.

It’s quite a lot to remember and memorize, especially those facts in the studies. I’m questioning the exam if there will be again very detailed questions. In my opinion you should know the mechanics of each asset class and not things like the percentage mean return of commodities from 1990-2000 compared with the ones from 2000-2010. What do I need that for? Historical details are useless. You should in this example just know if commodities performed better in this or that period, not the percentage of the mean returns. IMHO, detail grade is somehow just a tool to hold the failure rate constant.

Enough of grumble. I wish you all the best of luck for L2. Cheers

You said it! While preparing for Level 2, I felt like a teenager again, studying for my history exam. I think I will never forget that the CTFC was established in 1974, LOL.

Good point.

… and names like De Souza and Gökcan will follow me for the rest of my entire life. Haha. Damn.

Haha. I feel like De Souza, Hurst and Morton are my imaginary friends.

Haha :slight_smile: True story

It seems the exam is getting tougher each year.

Where are all the people who said CAIA’s an easy exam and that it should take no more than few weeks to prepare for it?

blue2014, a couple of years ago, the Core & Integrated part was very brief. My coworker who completed the program in 2012 was shocked at the length and detail of the book. And as I stated before, the exam was not easy at all.

I even scored higher in the mock exam (90%) and am still very much in doubt if I made it in the real world…

It sounds very sad sad Any more impressions?

Collegues, as soon as results are out (I think mid-April), please share your winning strategy. Now I feel I should take at least 2 weeks before the September exam to repeat everything.

Also, are essays managable for non-native speakers from language point of view?

I certainly see a trend of exam getting tougher, but it’s becoming difficult for everyone and the passing grade is based on relative stats.

Wouldn’t the end result be that everyone’s getting fewer correct answers, and people who prepared well - i.e. averaging 90%+ on practice exms - will still pass, but with lower absolute score? At the same time your relative performance metrics should not even change.

i just took the exam on tuesday. this was harder than i thought. i got 75% on the caia mock exam and felt pretty good (also used uppermark). i hope everyone here passes.

Level II was pretty hard. My experience with CAIA so far ( for comparison I have passed all of the CFA tests) is:

  1. The tests are slightly different. With CFA I had more time to linger over a multiple choice question. With CAIA I have to grind through them pretty fast given the time allowed. The essay questions on CAIA Level II were not as difficult as the essay questions on CFA Level III but still obscure and hard.

  2. The material compared to CFA is obviously smaller, and it is a bit less intense on calculations but carries with it the expectation that you need to remember a lot of very petty (and quite frankly uninteresting and unimportant) facts and figures.

  3. Less conceptually interesting than CFA, though it doesn’t need to be. The nuts and bolts of alternative investments are hinted at, but usually passed over in favor of boring academic studies about statistical correlations and (contradictory and overlapping) bureaucratic checklists about fund due diligence.

  4. I think I may have passed, due to the fact that while the test was difficult, I expect the curve to be easier than the CFA curve. If I’m wrong then I will be back to finish this up in September.

Bottom line is that, while not CFA, CAIA as far as difficulty of the actual test is concerned is no joke. Good luck to everyone.

HumanAction, you summed it up very well. They need to work on the type of information in the questions because much of it has no value added. For me, as someone with ten years of almost pure equity management experience, some of the readings were very interesting. You have a point about CFA being more difficult in terms of volume (there is no comparison, especially CFA Level II - from what I have seen and heard - and thus in CFA you forget everything a lot sooner after the exam lol) but CAIA Level II surprised me. As for calculations, personally I prefer the CAIA route because I see little point in memorising formulae just for those three or four hours.

You are right, they can do a lot more to make the curriculum more interesting. The core and integrated readings are a good start but they need to pick the articles more carefully.

Good luck all,

Dog

I agree that curriculum can be made better.

As of now about 1/3 of core book is devoted to commodities & managed futures. While important topic, it seems like an overkill to devote that much of the exam to just one topic.

I wish they gave more attention to hedge funds and covered strategies in more depth, so it’s not just theoretical discussion, but something that can be used in real world.

Also, they provide good coverage on potential new areas, such as 40 Act, UCITS, Alternative Hedge Funds. Sure, these instruments witnessed notable growth, but they are still relatively tiny fraction of the industry.