I just finished reading through material and I am trying to plan review. I’d appreciate if someone suggest an effective strategy. At this point: I’m planning on looking through my notes for about a week and start doing large Q-bank exams. I’d like to come up with a list of key topics that all of us have to master. For example, capitalization vs expensing, how choice of depreciation affects financial statements, etc. Any suggestions on how to come up with such list - or how to shorten LOS list to topical list?
marat, I’ll take a stab. Here’s a suggestion what to cover and when. This is a more or less exhaustive list. Hopefully it will get the ball rolling and people will suggest ways of improving this study plan or otherwise making it more efficient. ====================================== SS7 (Oct 11 and 12) - Objectives of financial reporting - Purposes of the principal five financial statements - Auditing - Income statement components - Revenue recognition methods - Implications of revenue recognition (impact on B/S, ratios, etc.) - Percentage of Completion vs Completed Contract: mechanics and implications, advance billings, construction-in-progress - Percentage of Completion vs Completed Contract: impact on cash flows - Mnagerial discretion and effect on financial statements - Components of B/S and equity - Statement of Cash Flows: CFO, CFI, CFF (direct and indirect method for CFO) - Convert indirect to direct - Worldwide accounting standards - Impact SS8 (Oct 13 and 14) - Common size statements and limitations of financial ratios - Internal liquidity, operating performance, risk and growth ratios - DuPont - original and extended - EPS - simple capital structure - Weighted average number of outstanding shares &effect of stock splits and dividends - Effect of convertible securities on EPS SS9 (Oct 15, 16, and 17) - FIFO, LIFO, average cost - Impact of FIFO and LIFO on inventory and COGS - LIFO to FIFO, FIFO to LIFO and Average to LIFO conversions - Effect of inventory method on financial ratios (more specifically: profitability, liquidity, activity and solvency ratios) - LCM principle; LIFO liquidation and LIFO reserve - Types of long-term assets - Depreciation methods and impact on ratios - Intangibles and their amortization - Expensing vs capitalizing and impact on ratios and financial statements - Capitalized interest, effect and interest coverage ratio - Capitalizing intangibles - Asset revaluations and impact - Depreciation methods and impact on ratios, financial statements and taxes - Fixed asset disclosures - Impairment of assets and impact on F/S and ratios SS10 (Oct 18, 19 and 20) - Income tax terminology - DTL/DTA (when and how they’re created, what’s valuation allowance, treated as liability vs equity, etc.) - Effective tax rate - Changes in tax rate and impact as well as required adjustments - Analyze effective tax rates and reconciliations - Deferred tax item disclosures and impact on F/S and ratios - Types of debt - Bond issuing (at par, discount and premium) and impact on F/S and ratios - Converitble bonds and bonds with warrants - Advantages and disadvantages to selecting different instruments - Impact on F/S and ratios from changes in interest rates on debt - Operating vs capital lease: definition and incentives - Effects on type of lease on F/S and ratios: Lesee - Effects on type of lease on F/S and ratios: Lessor (sales type vs direct financing) - Other off-B/S financing: definition and impact =================================== I’m planning on reviewing all of the above. However, if you want to pick only the major items, we can do that as well: revenue recognition methods, ratios and diluted EPS, inventory methods and their impact, capitalizing vs expensing, DTL and income taxes, issuing debt. That’s just a start. Looking forward to suggestions. I think the best thing to do is devote a couple of days to each SS and bang out as many questions as we can.
Awesome suggestions lola…wondering what’s your take on quant section… Thanks…
Lola, that’s a great start. I like your suggestions!
SS 2: TVM, DCF, Stat Concepts and Market Returns, Probability Concepts interest rate composition converting rates of different compounding periods to annual effective rate and annual stated rate calculate PV and FV of standard cash flows streams (annuities, mortgages, etc) NPV, IRR Money-weighted and time-weighted returns convert between yields (holding period yields, etc) population vs sample, measurement scales frequency, distribution mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, skewness, kurtosis Chebyshev’s inequality, Sharpe ratio, coefficient of variation random variable, probability (conditional, unconditional, Bayes rule) empirical, subjective, apriori probability dependent, independent variance, covariance, correlation combinatorics (counting problems) SS 3 random variables (discrete, continuous) density and cumulative distribution functions uniform and binomial distributions confidence intervals normal, log-normal distributions Roy’s safety-first criterion discrete vs continuous rate of return Monte-Carlo simulation sampling, simple random and stratified random time-series vs cross-sectional Central Limit Theorem Student t-distribution confidence interval for mean and variance biases hypothesis errors: Type I and Type II hypothesis tests for mean, variance, mean difference parametric and non-parametric test scatter plot, covariance, correlation correlation hypothesis test regression, R square and standard error
Thx for your input maratikus…awesome job…
nice! i guess its more or less similar to LOS…