Equity is too hard.
U in the wrong business!
Is there a particular part that you’re struggling with?
Equity is a tiny section compared to PWM/II, Fixed Income, and Risk…hope you’re crushing those 
the last section on portfolio construction is pretty tough. at first i thought maybe schweser just didn’t do a good job covering it, but I tried the CFAI text and just find it plain difficult.
my strategy is to just get a high level understanding of it so i can make educated guesses.
I agree. I thought it was going to be easier. I’m not understanding reading 29 well in the CFA text.
Equities involve a lot of repetition from L2. Not sure why some people find equities so hard, most of the material is just synthesis of what has already been learned but now you just need o apply that logic. Nothing much more to do. Keep on keeping on and you will be fine.
To me personally equities are much easier than other topics but I also find overall difficulty to be lower than L2 as far as reading the material is concerned. Even other topics are not too hard as there are less calculations than L2. I really hope I am not missing something here.
If you scared go to church! You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.
it’s just too wordy and lots of concepts to master but theyre not really unfamiliar, i would say
Well, the good news is that you can get 0% correct on equity and still pass…because that’s what I did.
If you can earn $1M from it, then you want to learn it.
Hi Guys,
I have saved equity for the last as I had a good success rate with equity in both Level 1 and 2. I noticed that the curriculum for Level 3 equity has changed from last year (from 1 reading to 4 readings) and even the exam weight has increased. How different is the new curriculum from last year in terms of content and difficulty?
Thanks!
I find both Equity and FI very hard.
Equity in level II was walk in the park, it was nothing more than valuation formulas. Level III is totally different IMO.
FI again. Not the EOC questions, neither the website questions (these are OKish with a bit of concentration) but some of the Blue Boxes, took me 30 minutes just to understand what they are trying to explain.
Maybe there are 3rd party prep materials who do a good job explaining for the dumber ones (like myself) but the curriculum does not.
I’m starting to get panick attacks when hearing that Equity and FI is easy for most candidates.
Maybe I should reschedule my plans and focus on 2020 for this exam.
You’re not trying to get a job in research/PM, are you?
Oh no, don’t worry. I’m neither in that geographical region, nor in that age group.
yep i agree with you… the concepts themselves are easy but the way the notes put together everything is confusing… also the practice question is a bit tricky, like you have to really boil down each word and the implications behind, not straight forward…
I agree. Can’t believe I’m getting MURDERED on equity questions. And I mean the topic tests/EOC’s/and previous AM exams. It’s really not straight forward at all. I kind of miss the plug and chug equity from L2.
They can even make basic “Is this systematic or discretionary / top down or bottom up” questions incredibly confusing. The EOC’s for active investing are a good example. I’m a little concerned about equity given the changes too… there’s not much precedent to go on. Going to have to re-read this entire section and hopefully it comes together.
Equity is annoying because the concepts are qualitative --> answers involve a degree of subjectivity.
They might give you info on PMs with different strategies, and you gotta figure out if it’s bottom-up/top-down(or hybrid) and discretionary/systematic. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out which is which because of the wording. One example is when you pick deep-value stocks during recession. The correct answer is top-down (since your first variable of interest is GDP growth, a macro variable), but you can easily argue that this is bottom-up if “recession” is interpreted to be a given, or both bottom-up and top-down since you’re using both approaches.
There’s also the bit on active risk versus total risk, and understanding the components of active risk and when it goes up/down relative to active share. Risk attribution and calculating contribution to total portfolio variance is one of the few quant concepts in L3 Equity.
A lot of concepts are just a repeat of stuff from level 1 and 2 (like different bottom-up strategies, GARP, difference between ETF and mutual funds). Index construction is pretty straight forward (what makes it more/less investable).