a special program for trader or technique analyst, any one knows it? how about its authority and popularity?
I heard about it, (but don’t know much about it) and the number of charter holders and candidates are very low. However, some pure technical analysts seem to carry the CMT. I am considering doing part or all of the CMT someday to learn about technical analysis as I know that it has some short-term use.
i have a buddy doing it here. he reads charts all day. he says its a good course.
Do you know how long (in terms of preparation hours) is the course? The CMT is a good excuse to study the technical analysis bible.
i’ll ask to see the books from him. Stern, you’re up early today. I’m here at work talking to clients.
LOL, It’s 10:30 in new york and I have a mergers &acquisitions accounting exam to study for…
Hi, Sternwolf, what do you mean “some short-term use”? Is it critical for people to become traders? I have checked the website of the market technician association, there is very little information about the exam. Do you know where to get the teaching material for that? I have done the sample quiz and found it not very difficult, do you have the same feeling?
I think the exam is more for personal development, than for contributing to a firm. I have read half of Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets and feel this is a good beginning and foundation for TA. Note though, that some firms and people consider this junk science.
Many in the short term consider it to be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy…others see it as just another set of tools to help gauge market psychology. I think over longer spans it can really help in spotting (somewhat) reliable trends and patters especially when used in conjunction with other analytical tools (ie fundamental, models, etc.) Those that subscribe strongly to the theory that past performance has absolutley no correlation with future action may simply shake their heads and call it a bunch of nonsense, like Bosy suggests. I imagine most firms think of it as a bit laughable, but I personally do not really know. I imagine pure traders are most receptive to the “science”. I know that using it in conjunction with other.analysis has made me a few decent chunks of change in my personal trading history. I took a sample exam for that and found it to be a piece of cake…but this is something, in the past, that I have studied on my own. Good luck!
Hi, I read John Murphy’s Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets on my own. And I did the sample quiz and found it a piece of cake. The point is how close the real exam is like the sample one. FrankArabia, how is your friend preparing for the exam, the information from the MTA is really so little.
he is doing the CMT from the CSI courses. he is reading the textbook. i didn’t get into the details with him.
This is one other desgniation that somewhat interests me as a former trader. I don’t think there is huge value in the designation professionally. sternwolf…You are going to graduate from NYU and earn the CFA and CPA…Honestly, you are spinning your wheels thining of doing any more designations than that. if you want to leanr something more just find books and read them. FRM, CAIA, CMT…Are all highly stylized and simplified study programs of the material that thye cover. If you really want to learn the material there are better ways. If you are looking to pad your resume designations have a diminishing margin of return and I actually believe after two designations there is a negative marginal return. I would even argue that every year the CFA loses significant value because of the number of people who pass the exam and then are hired but lack the skills to perform the job. In the last year or 2 I would say I would hire maybe 1 of 10 of those who have recently earned the charter. Probably 60% of the people passing now seem to be just good test takers.
RA…i have to definitely agree. So many people here are taking the CFA but none of them really care about investments. everybody here is taking it to get a better job (including myself). it really is a sad state.
The good news is the value of the designation will eventually go down to nothing and people will stop taking it. The BO guys will realize it isn’t worth the $2-3K in exam costs and study material and the 2-3 years of your life to get a designation that won’t get you out of the Wire room. It is already basically worthless to someone who doesn’t have any real experience in finance. If I see a guy with the CFA but his experience is in risk management or private client or fund accounting ect. I just toss it. I need to see either BS-ER, SS-ER, IB, VC, PE, PM, or specific industry experience to even consider a candidate for anything above entry-level…And we’ve pretty much adopted a policy of hiring no one who has been out of undergrad more than a year for entry level unless they are willing to work for free. (That sounds insane but we have 2 guys right now working here for free for a year or so simlpy because they want to get in the industry and have no experience.) Then once these people stop taking the exam then there will be less charterholders and the value will slowly start to increase again.
RA…i’m disappointed to hear that. You have basically told me that I have no shot to work wtih you no matter what. but the CFA is an entry level tool. if someone is already experienced, the CFA should mean less shoudln’t it? if you’re already a PM, why would you need a CFA? and why would you not hire anybody who has been out of undergrad more then a year?
RA - so there is value in the designation, but not really right now b/c we’re in somewhat of a CFA bubble (people are getting the designation to get it, but have no substance to back it up). The only problem I have with that is that these designations are substantive, not fluff, and do show at the least a fundamental understanding of the capital markets.
its not fluff. its just that other people before were able to extract abnormal profits from this designation.
FrankArabia Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > RA…i’m disappointed to hear that. You have > basically told me that I have no shot to work wtih > you no matter what. > > but the CFA is an entry level tool. if someone is > already experienced, the CFA should mean less > shoudln’t it? if you’re already a PM, why would > you need a CFA? > > and why would you not hire anybody who has been > out of undergrad more then a year? First, that is not my policy it is our firms i voted against it because I didn’t start on the institutional side until after over a year out of undergrad but our firm is a partnership and they felt like we don’t need to. We get ons of intern applicants who can do most of our basic entry-level stuff so they only usually try to hire the interns or there is usually someone who really wants to stay in Austin and break into ER and are willing to make sacrifices to do it. The CFA wasn’t meant to be an entry level designation; hence the 4 years experience requirement. It is supposed to show you learned the required skills in your 4 years of experience. The problem I have with CFAI is that they don’t verfy employment that is listed actually meets the requirements…So you end up with a lot of people who get the designation with out the skills they should have with the combination of the CFA and the experience. A lot of people saw how much money the CFA designation meant 10 years ago and now people start working on it in undergrad.
RA, i can’t agree with you more. I have guys working with me in Discount Brokerage who have CFAs who really don’t know a thing or care to with CFAs. They studied and they passed, and somehow, Discount Brokerage experience qualified. Ask them about their philosophy and the theory, and they draw a blank. I would have no problems if they did not count my DB experience. CFAI could actually improve their cirriculum a lot more through various sources. ONe complaint I had at L2 was the fact they wanted us to know the Black Scholes but did not require at all to know what the model really means (still to this day i don’t REALLY understand it). I would have appreciated it if they actually went through the whole model like they would do in grad school. To put it plainly, i think CFAI could be more rigorous. More levels (i suggest 5 offered twice a year), more in depth topics (proofs of certain theorems and derivations of models). I mean, coming from an economics background, i can say safely that the economics sections were not enlightening at all. They barely touched on economics and the stuff they did teach was superficial. They’re doing something positive though, but improvements are always possible as well. i haven’t studied L3 yet, so maybe its going to be really different and it will be a rude awakening for me. But L1 and L2 for me was strictly brute force.
FrankArabia Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > RA, i can’t agree with you more. I have guys > working with me in Discount Brokerage who have > CFAs. The fact that the there are CFAs working in Discount brokerage offices…Makes me sure the designation is headin towards meaning almost nothing.