Another study on CFA charterholders. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1458219 Are You Smarter than a CFA’er? Abstract: Several studies have examined whether a manager having an MBA or CFA leads to superior portfolio performance. However, these studies have yielded mixed conclusions. A possible reason is that most have considered only MBA or CFA alone, and most have not controlled for managers’ style targets. We examine MBAs and CFAs together, controlling for market conditions and style targets. We find no unambiguous difference in return attributable to MBA, CFA or Experience; but more significantly (especially in light of recent events), CFAs reduce and MBAs increase portfolio risk.
I love how they go through all this quantitative analysis to come up with the result and then proceed to make completely speculative comments as to why the results are the way they are.
In the January/February edition of CFA Magazine they had an article titled “Clearing the Bar” that discussed this topic. It summarized some of the academic studies that have been done to determine the valued added of the CFA vs MBA etc.
once you finish the program, you’ll realize all these studies are trivial.
FrankArabia Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > once you finish the program, you’ll realize all > these studies are trivial. Yesterday at work I was in a meeting with two PMs, both of which have solid decade plus track records. We were looking at a print out of an option from bberg, and one PM asked the other if he remembered what all the “greeks” meant (theta, vega, gamma, etc.) as a joke. Both PMs had forgotten, so they asked me, and I had forgotten too (all of us are CFAs), and we all had a good laugh. Basic message was the crap you learn in the CFA has limited relevance (at best) to producing alpha in the capital markets.
^ahhahahahahahaa hilarious bromion