What were sore spots for Lvl 2?

hey guys, congrats on getting to level 3! was wondering if you could give advice on a level 2’er here on what the sore spots were, and other tidbits of advice you can provide would be great! good luck on your studies,

Sore spots? How about everything.

portfolio managment left my a$$ sore. luckily it was a small weighting. i thought i had it down then they asked some stuff that i didn’t even remember reading… but the thing is, you just never know where the curveball is going to come from. last year it was BOP. the year before that it was treynor black. it wasn’t difficult by any means but just unexpected… so, i guess the point is: don’t worry about sore spots. you have to know ALL of it. it sucks, but that’s the way it goes… good luck.

Time series, ARCH, GARCH, BOP, Triangular Arb, all of pension accounting, EM valuation, EVA, Swaps, all of PM…you name it.

The exam is just freaking hard. Most likely the hardest exam you will take up (until level III). ; )

Time Series is bound to be tested eventually… That was the hardest part for me to get a good handle on.

But really, your only defense is to know EVERYTHING. If you pick and chose which parts you’re going to master, you are leaving your fate up to pure chance.

i think its alternative investment, because what’s in the schweser covers about 50% of what is on the text book schweser also did quite poorly on derivative, such as FRA, swaps etc because it lacks calculation examples… i have to dig those formulas myself in the text in contrary, i think schweser did quite a good job on the quant (regression/time series) part

As far as material, the quant was the most difficult IMO. Luckily it wasn’t thoroughly tested last year. Defined benefit pension accounting is a bear.

Currency swap!! There is no way I can do those.

McLeod81 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But really, your only defense is to know > EVERYTHING. AMEN, bro…

I should add: Knowing everything means getting at worst 70% when practicing questions for each section…

The BOP question was a surprise for several folks, I got lucky because I had written several reports during school on foreign currency exchange. Otherwise, as the other comments have mentioned you can’t cherry-pick what you want to study. I wouldn’t say that any of the material is drastically challenging on its own, it’s more the quantity of testable subjects that can be the killer.

For me it was derivatives - for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to compute swaps, swaptions, etc… One thing I would suggest is that if you DONT read the CFA text, is to read the examples povided in the readings (blue sections) and do the end of chapter questions. I repeated level II in 2008 and noticed a few examples in the 2008 text that were very very similar to a few exam questions in 2007.

Accounting!!!

Study it all. It’s the only way.

Dude, I’m still sore from taking it.