Ive been doing the CFAI book questions in excel. For the most part, many of the questions are not hard, but very long. For example: calculating kurtosis is a ridiculously long equation. Not hard, but long. When I see CFA exam labeled questions in the book, they are very simple and seem to just ask basic knowledge on a topic. Such as problem 22 on reading 7. Are these generally the type of problems I will see??? Thx.
actual exam questions are more conceptual. you don’t have to perform complex calculations. i wouldn’t even waste time solving quant problems if you are very comfortable with the concepts.
maratikus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > actual exam questions are more conceptual. you > don’t have to perform complex calculations. i > wouldn’t even waste time solving quant problems if > you are very comfortable with the concepts. I couldn’t agree with you more!
CFABLACKBELT, you need to give it a break with the excel stuff because you’re going to be in for a rude awakening come exam day. The posts above are correct regarding the conceptual nature of the real exam, plus you’re going to be much better off familiarizing yourself with your CFAI approved calculator in preparation for the few quantitative questions there are. just my 2cents
Any input on which topics tend to have actual calculation questions (kurtosis, PV, IRR, etc.)?? Or is it pretty random from all of the formulas?
Thats what I thought. Thanks guys/girls. I am doing excel+ calculator. I do the excel b/c I really wanna learn this stuff. But I do find problems with retaining information. How do you reccomend keeping in touch with the concepts? Doing the Q banks? Secrect Sauce? I hate bein a newb at this, but all gotta start somewhere. Thx again.
Use QBank or some other question source as a continuous reinforcer of things learned, past and present. Do not trust in your memory / retention so much as to leave the QBank for the end, or a couple of weeks before the exam. The way I used these tools was to keep giving myself 30 to 60 question tests on an ongoing periodic basis. More often than not, on areas I felt I was weak in, and did not have enough level of confidence in. Sometimes it would be a single topic test, sometimes it would span multiple topics. CP
excel is good for understanding but knowing how to use the calculator is crucial.
I know you can get all creative with Excel, but you need to ditch it and just know your calculator inside out because that’s all you’ll have on exam day. I do agree with everyone that memorizing formulas is not as important as knowing the concepts. I just can’t imagine a question on the exam that asks you to compute Kurtosis. With questions like that, they would have to make the test 8 or 10 hours long. Let’s be serious. After all, the questions are MC.