I used mostly schweser (books & video CDs) and thought that several of the topics that people said “weren’t covered” actually were. Take “cost proximity”: the Schweser notes clearly talked about differentiators needing to be close enough on cost so that they weren’t blown out of the water by a low cost competitor, and that a risk was in having a significantly higher cost structure (paraphrasing here, have shelved every shred of study material out of sight). Similar for the inclusion of short selling causing a less stable MVF - that was in Schweser as well. I, for one, would rather see the tests be “tricky” such that they test a working understanding of the concepts, not of the formulas. IMHO, it’s more valuable to have analysts who most thoroughly understand the concepts and can apply them to abstractly worded questions rather than those who have mechanically memorized the 10 steps to calculating FCFE from EBITDA. That said, I was frustrated by all the time spent studying things that didn’t appear. If I take the L2 again, I’ll likely spend less time working swap pricing formulas and more on reading the CFAI articles as if I was reading an interesting column in The Economist.
papasita, thanks for your compliments … if you only knew of my secret past life in public service …