I have a FRM certification (sat for the exam several years ago) and currently thinking about taking the CAIA Level 1 exam next September. I have NOT touch a quant book for several years and was thinking of spending the next six months working on the prerequisite readings. Then, sign up for the September exam and start studying the core material. My question is the “CAIA Fundamentals” by Schweser worth the time? It appears from the CAIA Prerequisite Study Guide that both textbooks are covered entirely in the prerequisite review. Keep in mind, if I am going to spend 150 to 200 hours studying for the CAIA Level 1 exam next summer, I don’t wish to cut corners. Is “CAIA Fundamentals” by Schweser worth the time and money as a review tool? ebitda4us
I finished my CFA this year and just started the CAIA. I bought the Schweser package along with the fundamentals book. It’s a pretty good review product so if you don’t mind dishing out the extra few bucks, why not? That said, they’ve removed a number of quant readings from L1 this year. I am well through the CAIA book and have seen very little that requires extensive use of quant material. Hope that helps.
sircorn… I was given an old CFA Institute textbook (copyright 2004), titled “Quantitative Methods for Investment Analysis” (second edition) by DeFusco, McLeavey, Pinto and Runkle. It includes end of chapter questions and solutions (all in one textbook). I was told it was used as recently as the 2008 CFA exam. CAIA prerequisite readings recommends the same authors but an updated version of the book published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. (copyright 2007), titled “Quantitative Investment Analysis” (also second edition). I checked the index of both books; same number of chapters, same title to each chapter, etc. I only different appears to be the end of chapter questions and solutions are in a separate solutions manual that a candidate can purchase. So, the candidate pays $60.00+ for the text and another $25.00+ for the solution manual. My question…do you think if I review all the chapters plus end of chapter problems using the old textbook, I will be ready for the CAIA Level I material? Overkill (aka madman!!!), underkill or just right??? ebitda4us
spend time on the question bank…
Have you looked at the CAIA prerequisite study guide on the CAIA website? Theres no need to read all the chapters (unless you want to…) just the ones on the guide. Then there’s a practice prerequisite test on the site as well and if you score 70% or better you’re ready to study for the test. You probably already know this just thought I’d mention it just in case…I personally didn’t do any of this because I’m antsy to get down to studying. I will go back to studying prerequisite material when I bump into material I don’t understand.
ebitda4us Yes, that should be more than enough. For all of the talk of knowing the quant stuff, there’s remarkable little in the L1 material that requires you to use much of it. I’ve just finished reading all of the L1 material on a first go and there’s no questions to be answered (that’s why I am also using Schweser) but there is a lot of reference to distributions on various asset classes and subsets of those classes so you see a lot of reference to Expected Return, Std Dev., Skew, Kurtosis and Sharpe ratios. There’s also a lot of references to Cov, Corr. and R^2, not from a calculation point of view but from a descriptive point of view. I don’t think you’ll have a problem.