Just wondering how are you guys doing with your learning because I guess I am not learning as much as I wished? Wished I had more than 24h a day? Have you already gone thr’ all study sessions? Need some advice!!!
Doing really bad right now. Have been reading the Schweser Study Session 1 since second week of Dec till now and have not finished it. Plans have been derailed by the Christmas season. I plan to study 18 hours per week starting this week. how about you?
I have done only 13 readings in CFA books but it is not in an orderly way. Done some FSA, Fixed income, equity, quant etc…Have u already gone thr’ CFA books. I will be having 1 month holiday mid feb. Hope this might help because I have the impression there’s too much!!! I have the stalla 09 but I think its just some kinda of summary & doesn’t go into details.
hi michael i was wondering about stalla material. from your experience is it worth buying stalla or going with schweser. Some how the schweser material is very tough given that i have never done accouting or any economics course in the past. i am a software engineer and fighting very hard to comprehend the material. i wish there is some easy book that walks me through the concepts. thanks
Well if that can reassure you I am from an engineering background. I got my Phd in electronics beginning of this year and never did finance before. Me too I find it quite hard but that doesn’t discourage me so far. In fact I find the lecture CDs from stalla very useful, it’s very well explained and easy to understand for a person from a non financial background. Peter olinto rocks!! I find the study guide from stalla useful but it’s not as well explained as in CFA books. As for schwester although I have been able to get the learning materials for 2008 I have not yet used it. So I can’t tell u. I think there’s no easy way than to go thr’ all the official books. Good luck and don’t give up!
Week one spent roughly 14 hours going the the Standards of Practice handbook, working problems & quizzes, and reviewing. Week two has been a big disappointment. Started strong, but really slacked off with the Christmas and only made it about half way through Quant Section 1 (Stalla). With no anticipated holidays/hiccups for quite a while, I’m ready to get back on track. Goal is ~18 hours per week until May 1st and then its overdrive w/ review and practice/mock exams.
Relax…you guys all have tons of time. Please don’t stress out…there’s really no need to. Overkill for L1 is pointless…
I’m yet to complete Schweser Study Book 1. I plan to complete both Book 1 & 2 in January, Book 3 & 4 in February, Book 5 in March. Then, I plan to just do questions from the QBank from April to the day of the June exam!
manavecplan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Relax…you guys all have tons of time. Please > don’t stress out…there’s really no need to. > Overkill for L1 is pointless… I agree completely - you guys have tons of time. What’ll happen is that at the end you will go into marathon after marathon of studying, and once you start doing Qbank etc, it’ll all come together. If you even do one reading a day, you are going to be ahead of the game. Try to get .75 readings a day and you will have well over a month to do Qbank and practice. If you start stressing now this is going to be a long extremely painful process. Just take it easy, try to retain as much as possible, and above all try to learn the material instead of memorizing.
It’s great to have this advice here, this community really eases my mind - though sometimes freaks me out too!
I’m done with Ethics and will be done with Quants tomorrow. Then I will move on to FSA in January and spend all month on that. In Feb its Econ (and taking a week off to go to the beach with my family). In March its Portfolio Mgmt., Markets and Equities, and April is for Fixed Income, Derivative and Alternative Investments. That leaves March for review/mock exams/going over weak points. So, basically, I’m doing a book a month and leaving the last month for review. It’s a bit slow, I know, but I don’t have that much time to study. Happy New Year’s to you all!
updates on the progress please… Just done with Ethics and almost done with Quant SS1
I am going through Quant right now, but thats because i started with FSA. Heard that was the worst so i wanted to give myself time to really do that twice. A lot of the quant isnt too bad because i remember it from college, but there are some parts where i’ll read the whole page and stop and ask myself “What the f*&% was i just suppose to learn there?”
Finished Ethics and going through Quant, but at a much slower pace than I expected. I’m hoping to finish Quant by this Friday assuming I do a whole LOS a day (*scoff*). I keep hearing FSA is the devil in the curriculum, and I am very afraid. I’m an Economics major, so finance/accounting isn’t my forte =/ Hopefully a month’s time is all it’ll take to tackle FSA, which I plan on doing sometime February (just like a few others it seems) so I have time for everything else. I’m using Schweser and am doing pretty well on the concept checkers, but the comprehensive questions get pretty tricky. Are these a good representation on the level of difficulty on the L1 exam? How about those concept checkers? Thanks a good luck guys!
I’m trying to do a LOS per day dude!! It’s quite hard to keep up with that especially for long readings like quant. How about u?
Michael, if you’re doing Stalla the readings shouldn’t be that bad or that ong. I would start reading on Sunday, finish the weekly reading on tues or wed. Thursday I would work on the lecture. Friday I wouldn’t do much, that was my relaxing day. Maybe finish the lecture when I got home from work if it was really long. Saturday do some practice problems and review a little. Sunday start over again. With that plan I was able to still go out on Saturday and relax on Friday and Sunday night. It’s all about time management. The sections that aren’t that interesting, read them anyway and do the practice problems to reinforce. Remember you do not need a 100 to pass. Good luck. and Good luck to me and everyone else on Jan 28…
I have noticed CFAI practice problems are relatively easier than Stalla. Maybe i am on just Quant, that’s why…which is a good representation of the L1’s level of difficulty?
yep you are right
Hi, I am planning to give the L1 on Dec and am from a Computer background. What do you guys suggest to start with, 1) Schweser 2) Stalla 3) CFA Textbooks. Pls let me know so that i can start ASAP. Thanks
I am 3 days away from completing book 1 of CFAI curriculum. Quant took too much time…but happy that now I am quite well versed with the various concepts, thanks to some extent to youtube…got some really helpful videos on say, lognormal distribution, CLT etc… I am sticking to the CFAI curriculum. I see no point in going thro all 3 prep materials…I do sometimes refer Schweser when the CFAI reading is ‘tough’…and nothing makes sense…I have found Schweser to be much more user friendly…with more graphs/diagrams which make a topic easier to understand…