hi everyone
i fail this year and i will study harder but i study from CFAI books, my problem is derivatives the book is not enough, i answer every detail and EOB questions but i know it will not benefit me the next year too, do you have other sources i can use it is the only topic i have problem with, i can study harder from the CFAI books except in derivatives, it is really useless book!
thank you all
I really recommend looking into either Wiley or Kaplan for help on this. I haven’t used Kaplan, but have heard great things. I can say that Wiley’s L2 derivative videos were truly some of their best that I’ve seen from either their L1 or L2 videos. Basit Shajani is the lecturer, and you can tell he really crafted them carefully.
thank you very much
Mark Meldrum was a godsend for derivatives. That man knows his Sh*t inside out
thank you
I’ll probably be the minority as far as finding this resource useful but I liked analystnotes.com for derivatives, the whole reason I grabbed their package was because I just wasn’t getting derivatives any other way (and it was the cheapest). Actually liked the material, gives a very high level look at each subject but helped me key in on the most important information in each topic. I primarily used the CFAI books but would go through the analystnotes summaries as well to make sure I covered the big picture in my notes from the CFAI material.
If analystnotes wasn’t useful I was going to use Magician’s material on his site, probably a much better resource than analyst notes. I actually posted a similar thread this year, you can get a free look at his stuff on the website and even the free example was useful.
Here’s the thread I posted: https://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-ii-forum/91357176
got 70+ on derivatives this year 
thank you, and wish you the best in level 3
I can’t recommend Mark Meldrum’s vidoes enough. Watch his videos and solve EOCs along with him.
For derivatives only, curriculum does a bad job of explaining things.
i wrote that in the survey, thank you for the advice
Shweser is a great base, but smash all the official curriculum questions again and again
I used Curriculum and i had above 70% in it, so my advice, stick with the curriuculum, just practice more this time around.
I’ll be using schweser and mark meldrum. For some reason, the way schweser writes their formulas just looks nicer to my eyes which makes it easier for me to make common sense of the formula. That being said, I will only be doing questions from the CFAI EOCs… If you need help with option strategies, feel free to message me when you start studying derivatives.
I’ve been thinking about doing some videos this year (I just got a youtube channel). Maybe I’ll start with Level II derivatives. That’s a fun subject to teach, and not remotely as hard as people make it out to be. When explained well, of course.
You can answer the questions but did you read the book?? Calling the CFAI material useless is a little extreme, it’s all I used and scored >70%. You also claim it’s the only topic you struggled with, judging by your failing score I’d have to disagree. I agree with S2000 and say once you understand the material it’s really simple and intuitive - though I hated reading the author of the text writing ‘simply’ throughout the material.
If S2000 makes a video, watch it
it is not clear, and without enough exaples
thank you
thank you
i study the CFAI books but this topic is really bad written
As someone who was previously terrified of Derivatives, I benefited greatly from the Kaplan videos, particularly BJ Tolia’s video on Derivs pricing. It went from an area that was really difficult for me in review to an area in which I scored 70%+ on the actual exam.
I read from Schweser’s texts for all of level 2. I think Derivatives is confusing in general, so I ended up reading over the Derivatives chapters 4-5 times. It took a while for me to understand it completely, but after much practice, it can be done. I suggest reading it over multiple times with Schweser.