These damn derivative problems take so long to do… or is it just me?? I get confused halfway through calculating a fixed vs. floating rate swap, sometimes I don’t even know where to start!! I’ve been practicing as much as I can, but there’s just so much. Any tips on how to do these quicker?
my way to get the answers quicker is I guess. lol. im in the same boat.
Seriously, these may as well be written in Chinese as far as I’m concerned. If anyone has any tips I’d love to hear them!
Yeh, Choice C 
I discovered a way to calculate the floating vs. fixed rate swap. it has worked effectively for all the practice exams i have done. Follow these steps: - Read the vignette - Understand which side is the floating side and which side is the fixed side (especially for Currency swaps) - Guess for all 6 questions. Its fast, easy and convinient! LOL…
yeah they are not fun… Check this out regarding Swaps… it helped a ton! I would def. recommend printing this out and practicing with these problems… good luck! http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,702537,page=1
Guys, May be you know already, however have a look at John Hull book “Options, Future and other derivatives”.
I agree, I feel like I could spend hours of some of those topics and still get lost, especially the swaps
If you are getting confused halfway thru, try drawing a little diagram so you can “follow the money” …sometimes that can keep things straight
I’m lucky in that my first attempt at swaps questions is so far out that it isn’t one of the distractors. Then I try again and again and get a different answer each time. As soon as one of the is an answer, I put it down. It’s what’s called an iterative process ;(
I agree 100%, i.e. (Derivatives… What the???)^100 http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,711668
I’m beginning to agree with you. I don’t know if Derivatives is worth the time so late in the game. Only 2.5 weeks to go and I still haven’t mastered many of the other study sessions which are at least straight forward. That level of useless detail reminds me of all those calculations for calculating the z-spread and all that fixed income minutiae back in Level I. If I’m not done with Derivatives by the end of today, I guess I’ll have to move on…
I know this is lame, but it actually helped, I looked up credit swaps and FRA’s on YouTube and ended up finding a couple of videos that explained it in 5 minutes better than both Schweser and the CFAI books could in 20 pages! Should be a nice way to introduce yourself into the material and believe me, it’s a lot easier to read after. Only problem is there aren’t many videos on pricing them, but there’s a couple of videos explaining the concepts and relating them to useful examples.
Care to post the links? I’m willing to give them a try if it helps…
links please?
please give the links red
Credit Default Swaps (5 min): Good basic explanation of what they are and how to use them. The other Mike Gasior videos talk about MBS, ABS, and “The Swaps Market Place” which I found useful. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=H46lWvgypQ8 FRA’s (8 min): The beginning is a bit confusing but it’s a nice and simple explanation of the calculation using Excel. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=2w3UKHykXbI Contango vs. Backawardation (8 min): This is long and talk, but I found the contango and backwardation particularly useful. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=4ANPFbW_8BI&feature=related Hope this helps!