Hello,
Recently just graduated with a BS in Economics from an average state university. I have never taken a finance class, and I took one intro to financial accounting course in college, but the course was too easy and focused excessively on debits and credits rather than big picture ideas (“how is the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement connected together?”)
I’ve been studying Level I every weekday for the past two months. So far I have read FRA and now I’m reading Equity and Fixed Income (halfway done). Also read Ethics and Quantitative Methods during last winter’s break but only made a study guide and flashcards, no practice problems.
Also, I made 250 flashcards alone for FRA. Also made ~120 cards for Fixed Income, and not even finished with that section yet. I don’t know if I am over-reading or over-studying. But when I do I learn a lot. Basically my strategy so far has been to read the CFAi curriculum books, highlight, then make a study guide based off of highlighted sections and then flash cards based off of the study guide. But it is very time consuming and overwhelming. But when I study the flash cards, I do really well on CFAi EOC , Blue box problems, and analystnotes.com problems.
Starting to think my strategy is much too time consuming, although it has been working. I also get confused easily and have to often re-read or slow read the tougher sections that I have absolutely no education in (for example, Fixed Income valuation and Asset backed securities).
Should I continue to study the way I have been doing, but run the risk of running out of time to cover all of the books, or should I simplify/condense but run the risk of not being in depth enough, and thus not do well on practice problems or practice tests?
I got a book called “The Direct Path to the CFA” but it seems like she does the same strategy as I do (read, study guide, flash cards), except she moves faster and condenses a bit more. I read very slow b/c I type the study guide as I read and also due to my non-finance background.
Not sure what would be the best strategy because either way I run the risks mentioned above.