I know the ethics standards prevent me from saying things that can damage the reputation or integrity of the CFA institute, and I don’t think I will by saying any of this, but some of this is becoming a hard pill to swallow in the sense that I may have wasted some of the best years of my life in a library
im about to write the level three exam, yeah? At this point I’ve basically learned everything. I’m done with all 14,000 pages…
but the problem I’m having is I still feel stupid. I can read some of your guys extremely well thought out in depth analysis on things and I’m blown away at how some of you think (especially swan). And this is problematic to me, because I was under the impression that by going through this program I too would get there. But I truthfully wouldn’t know where to start in approaching some of the write-ups and general sense of logic y’all have with your analysis.
I really have learned SOO much, but I’m no where near where I thought I would be.
Tanks for the feedback, I’ll consider simplifying some of my arguments to make them easier to understand. It’s just when you have a very, very large brain it can be hard sometimes.
I also feel cheated by the CFA program. I thought this was a one-way ticket to the world of bottles&bitches but this program has turned me into a hermit whose only interaction with women is sharing the same train car during commute. And the closest I’ve come to Bollinger was when I read about Bollinger bands on Level II. Do they do refunds at CFAI ?
I think you’ve got to view the program this way: to go through the program equips you with a generalist knowledge of finance. After passing L3, you have a very solid base to build on. But mastery and in-depth application of your skills comes only with real life experience.
If you are interested in improving your ability to think, I’d check out Farnam Street. I’ve found learning about how to build different models helps making thinking more rigorous, like the model thinking mooc. Maubassin also publishes a lot of stuff on how to be systematic in thinking
lol tale as old as time. that guy in wolf of wall street. met him when he was giving a talk at my school and he had me convined that finance is key to a lit life. so i went to merrill lynch. they then told me to take cfa exams. then when i took the cfa exams. i hated my life 3 months out of the year. u can prolly get more bottles with rich friends.
The wolf of wall street - wasn’t he a kind of a loser? I read somewhere that he was the dude who tried being all BSD but by the end of the day was just a little pussboy who sold some shady micro caps to plumbers as the next FANG stuff? His biggest success was to write a pretty entertaining book about being a big-time wall street BSD?
Yeah, heard the same about the Wolf of Wall Street, guy just hosts sales workshops in old strip malls.
Anyhow, my $0.02 is you’re in your early 20’s and comparing yourself to people who are early to mid 30’s. Most people with good investment knowledge are reasonably smart and spent many years as a full time job working long hours learning this stuff, so its unrealistic to expect to get there out of the gates. I feel like I am constantly learning major lessons and have come to appreciate the experience of more veteran investors as I reach career middle age. So I wouldn’t get down about it. The investing field isn’t what it used to be but if you’re determined to gain good investment expertise, there’s no replacement for getting a job directly in the investment management field either in research or a PM role. Best way to do that is to target a top tier (Top 10) full time MBA and the median age to start one of those is around 26.
