I am about 40% through Quant material and 40% through derivatives. Those are the only two sections I have left before I start going back through and doing practice exams and heavy review over the higher weighted topics. I want to skip over these sections so bad. I feel like the reading and practice doesn’t stick with me. I’m afraid I’m wasting valuable days on material that either I’ll forget anyway no matter what I do or that won’t really be that big of a portion on the test.
These two sections just make me awful. I don’t want study.
Just give it more time. If you are not confortable with the readings so far, then prepare better for the exam. I don’t know why candidates want to pass L2 in 4 or 5 months without achieving an adequate level of knowledge.
I know passing L2 by luck is very unlikely, but if the result is that you know almost nothing after passing, then the project had no value at all.
My personal opinion.
Although I have no problem with derivatives (it was love at first sight since my undergrad) statistics I will never understand. I have tried going back to the very source of all models, tests and theory by reading specialized books etc I still have no idea what is going on. Nevertheless, I score pretty well on this topic merely by going with the flow and applying formula. The complexity of the models is compensated by the straightforwardness of the questions. So solve a couple of vignettes and you can work backwards to squeeze the juice out of the topic.
I will suck it up and try to get through it. I just get anxious thinking about all the other stuff I could study that would be easier to reinforce in my memory.
If u cant understand quants there is literally no point learning formulas. That is one area you shouldn’t mug up.
Take a look at the articles I’ve written on quant and (especially) derivatives:
I have some more quant articles in the works – some time series stuff in particular – that may be of some help when they’re done.
Step by step. Each concept is covered by bluebox so try to practice as much as you can. Afterwards, solve each thematic EOCs in CFAI curriculum and last and the most important practice on CFAI portal each vignette case related to certain topic. By reading correct answer you will find what else left as your weak within certain topic. Then, repeat whole procedure again and again until you start feel you are able to solve most of required vignette questions. At one point you will start considering on the fly why f.ex. A is not correct anwser and B is correct in fact A seems correct as straight forward. Given my experince by studying the material that’s ,IMO, exactly what CFAI requires from candidates to sucessful pass L2.
I once asked a visiting Cambridge University statistics professor why we square the mean deviations when calculating standard deviation of a sample (why not just take the modulus?) he liked the question but wasn’t sure why. Now try to build on that uncertainty such concepts as normal returns, t tables, z tables, degrees of freedom whatnot…
Thanks! It is kind of implied (the real question would be why integrate) and I’d like to discuss more subtleties but that would be unfair to the OP.