Greetings, I have been reading this board for what seems like ages now, and this is my first time posting. So I sat down yesterday and took my first Mock Exam. I scored a 69%, which was pretty horrifying, but the worst part was that I missed 11 out of 18% questions on ethics, which was the difference between a 69% and a 75ish. This is really frustrating to me in that I feel like Ethics is the softball section. There are no formulas to memorize, no really difficult concepts, but I am getting consistently killed on it. Does anyone have any advice or best practices that they used to overcome this themselves? I’m not sure what it says about me personally if my ethical barometer can’t guide me through these to at least an 80%. Thanks and best of luck to everyone.
thats a good score for your first test. the score will only get better… and ethics questions are all about practice. you said it yourself, there are no formulas, no difficult concepts… just practice.
I’m weak at ethics also. It’s frustrating but I think the best way is to train yourself to think the way they think—which oftentimes is the opposite of what I think the answer is. So now, I kid you not, I sometimes choose the opposite choice. Sadly, that seems to work. Clearly I’m not a very ethical person. Anyway…good luck!
the mock this year is harder, thats all.
Are you using the CFAI texts for Ethics? It’ll take about 5-6 hours to read around 100 pages carefully but its definitely gonna be worth it… Also, consider using Q.Bank (Schweser) (LOS quizzes will definitely help as you’ll be able to understand each LOS better). There’s enough time so don’t fret much… 
ATB! EastCoastJ Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > Does anyone have any advice or best practices that > they used to overcome this themselves? I’m not > sure what it says about me personally if my > ethical barometer can’t guide me through these to > at least an 80%. > > Thanks and best of luck to everyone.
Thanks, that’s good advice. I have reread Ethics using the Schweser material, but not the actual CFAI text. I was afraid it would come down to that as mentally it seems like spending an entire day on Ethics isn’t a good use of time this close to the wire, but I’ve got to do something at this point I guess to bring that score up!
Ethics is a tricky section. Lots of people think it will be easy, because hey, it’s just words, but the Institute does not put easy ethics questions on its exams. I can promise you that ethics gets progressively more difficult through the program, so that L1 < L2 < L3. I got 70+ on L1 ethics, but only 50-70 on L2 and L3. And it’s not like I didn’t study for it. For L1, I’d recommend going through all the ethics questions you can find and then write down the explanation for anything you got wrong or didn’t fully understand. I did this at L1 and had about four or five pages of bullet points. What rules of thumb shine through? I still remember two of the big ones - “fair, accurate and complete” is a key phrase, and of course so is “the client comes first.”
Thanks for the advice, I think getting exposure to as many ethics questions as possible is going to be clutch. I’m still taking a bath when it comes to ethics. I see questions like the ones on the CFAI mock exam where the guy gets in the fist fight in the middle of the trading floor and I convince myself that this must be a violation of the Standard relating to the Integrity of Capital Markets, because a Capital Market can’t function efficiently if two market makers are rolling around the floor rather than maintaining an orderly market in their stock. I feel like in exactly half of these types of questions I will be right by taking liberties with the Standard and throwing the book at the perpetrator and hitting them with a violation of all Standards listed, and then the other half of the time I will be completely wrong (like in this case). It doesn’t help that some of the questions are rather absurd (the other question on the mock exam where the CFA gets stopped for speeding, but wasn’t really speeding due to an error with the officers radar gun, and he attempts to buy the officer a sandwich (which somehow the questions mentions is more expensive than the ticket???) because he doesn’t have the schedule availability to go to court. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take the PV of the sandwich and the ticket or what.
Hey Dude…take this freebee…its 50 MCQ’s and about 90% are bankable!! Just a lil outdated because i think its a mix of AIMR Questions to but i def found it as added value and please reread ethics http://webapp2.aimr.org/aimr/Register.asp?SESSION=1056824018437627
EastCoastJ Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks for the advice, I think getting exposure to > as many ethics questions as possible is going to > be clutch. > > I’m still taking a bath when it comes to ethics. I > see questions like the ones on the CFAI mock exam > where the guy gets in the fist fight in the middle > of the trading floor and I convince myself that > this must be a violation of the Standard relating > to the Integrity of Capital Markets, because a > Capital Market can’t function efficiently if two > market makers are rolling around the floor rather > than maintaining an orderly market in their stock. > I feel like in exactly half of these types of > questions I will be right by taking liberties with > the Standard and throwing the book at the > perpetrator and hitting them with a violation of > all Standards listed, and then the other half of > the time I will be completely wrong (like in this >case). > > Any type of abuse is or at least was common on exchange floors. It could of possibly have not been documented but it happens. To get back to your question, Integrity of Capital Mkts, really deals with the public’s trust and confidence in the capital mkt’s . If your buying stock XYZ from a trader at schwab or lets say gs. Do you care whats going on on the floor or how would you even know? The main concern is best price execution. The answer to the question is a violation of Ethics and Standard Relating to Professionalism - Miconduct. To share a personal story with you, I used to work for a specialist firm on the floor of the NYSE and these 2 guys REALLY hated each other. Mike, a Partner/Specialist for the firm I worked for was a really nice person, sharp looking, and def was ranked as one of the top specialists at the firm but when you worked for him in his post, forget about it…he was a complete different person. A complete you know…lol Not many wanted and if I recall no one at the time wanted to be his front-line clerk or trading assistant but he had a great one assigned to him. For some reason I always volunteered to assist him in his assigned stocks he listed when the other trader was out and when I wanted to get more experience working on the stocks he represented for the firm. Bottom line he would shred you into 50,000 pieces if you screwed up a trade and the next day you get an unfavorable QT. Andrew Patti, on the other hand, a $2 broker who was this short, fat, italian “thinks he’ connected” type of guy who walked with his head up all the time, possibly because he was 5’4…lol. But with him, either you like him or don’t and vice versa. I personally thought the guy was funny and out of his mind Obvoiusly, Andrew needed Mike Mulroy because he was making markets in the shares his clients wanted to buy/sell. They didn’t fight on the floor but you heard a lot of going back and forth, not typical in a broker/specialist relationship and I think Mike came up with this brilliant idea to settle their disputes and the next business day you saw black eyes. Did they lose the publics trust? NO . Now had Mike, hypothetically “traded ahead” of Andrew’s client’s order, then Mike would be in violation of the Standard Integrity of Capital Mkts and if they fought, both would be in violation of ethics code and std of prof - misconduct I’ll leave the rest for you to read…hilarious…i think i would of never remembered this if it wasn’t for this question! Thanks for that! Read both articles - classic!! OMG you really got me thinking about those days!! http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E7DD113BF935A35751C0A9639C8B63 http://www.trinityboxing.com/ringer/2007_02_01_archive.html
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:6I5NjOMcEOoJ:www.nyse.com/pdfs/01-05_newsltr_integrated2.pdf+michael+mulroy+nyse&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShtOLpO7M7D_ZhpaDh_EAg-20xA0JR6PrlxJWxSf3TRVB6dfH_QvCi2ldy8s9ejQAu0efBfpWVHxhHAifpmPATh7JHVQn82zWaDRJXnUo8hsQHfR7uXcabPrwELazSTVuniFMGn&sig=AHIEtbQYOiw9DMMkEyuw2mRTgzhAoLpIQA http://lifeatthejerseyshore.com/v3/michael Thats him! Pg 6 in the 1st link. Because of him and my persistence of asking to get on his book, it helped me advance much quicker than any other new hire they ever brought in at the time i was in. In fact, within months I was opening and closing shares in of high volume stocks we represented, in addition, to other stocks I was assigned. He also recommended me to the specialist for Citi, “C” , our highest volume shares at the time and i was given the opportunity to get on the book but I couldn’t last for more than 20 minutes and didn’t want too…lol While others that I started with were still learning to use the keyboard. Ironically, I never thought I would be good at anything using my hands but I was pretty good and lightning fast using the keyboard to execute orders and place tickets in SuperDOT Obviously, I was passionate about the work, i was young, poor and hungry (still am…lol) jp and loved being in the New Room of the NYSE!!!
@nj : interesting article…thanks
i used to suck at ethics until i did like 1853 questions. then i avged like 90%.
whered u get so many questions from?
njlevel you made my day. That’s hilarious, thanks a ton for sharing. I gotta pick your brain once I get this test over with. Thanks a ton for those ethics questions too, that’s going to be clutch.