@Bchad&Greenman- no offence to CFP holders out here or anywhere else,but the level of sophistication in CFP is not even close.I strongly disagree with those folks who think of it as a finance designation because its not.I have seen the curriculum and while it may be in need in certain places its more of a joke,they may be better paid on an median/mode scale(Which I dont know) but I cant think of them as salesman.Used car salesman I can put up with,but someone who uses financial jargon to earn peoples trust I can trust that much.
Regarding the CPA/ACCA,etc the only reason I am mentionig those is for guys who want to work in finance ,then again I think if the forum is going to have a bigger piece of the pie you run the risk of trolls and people who migrate from one forum to another.But seriously guys think about letting some guys from the CPA community in,I think the share of info and ideas would add value.But then again the mods know better than me
Well, all these financial designations are not that rigorous. The CFA teaches you very low level concepts too. The point of these certifications is that they give you a foundation to network and expand your knowledge by yourself. People don’t pass CFP or CFA and then say “ok I’m done with my career”. That happens in year 1 or year 2. You have to actually do the job after that.
This is normal. Most of the people that are successful in this industry that can contribute the most either don’t have the time to post or prefer to use their free time doing something else than posting on an anonymous forum. Then you have the unemployed and underemployed that have so much time that they pollute the forums.
I once seriously considered starting an investment data company called Big Data and trying to take it public with the ticker BIGD. The marketing slogan would have been, “Giving the market what it wants… Big D.” People would have liked that.
“Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…” Dan Ariely
Short Version : Almost everything we do now is generating data, ~ 98% of the collected data is only 2 years old and people want to use this data to make more ‘informed’ decisions. It’s a new industry that’s growing at a ridiculous pace and is estimated to create a bare minimum of 4 million jobs worldwide by 2020.
It has little in common with finance though except overlapping concepts in Maths / Statistics.
@zidhai the only place it overlaps with finance is where trends of behavior is detected among these big sets of data,this trend will obviously help in any business field ,including but not limited to finance
There are a number of small business and consumer loan companies that use big data for their lending practices. They are growing like mushrooms on drugs.
@krnyc2008 most banks in US are implementening big data to quantify their customers in terms of their loan payback ability,or using marketing strategies (partnering up with other firms )so custmers are forced to spend more with their debit cards etc…
So yeah,it does overlap with finance,more zidhai thinks
It’s probably because I have a Big4 background, but personally I would prefer to hire a CPA/CA for analysing companies than an MBA-type or a CFA charterholder, all else equal.
But then again, I am one to believe that investing is about digging in company numbers rather than looking at yield-curves and economic indicators.