So I just failed and it looks like it was due to a question or 2. My score band was touching the mps line. The thing that gets me us that I thought I crushed econ but I scored in bottom 10%. I can’t understand that. I remember people saying pm had curveballs, does anyone remember curveballs on econ? I though I got at least 5 out of 6. Anyway, I just registered again and there are A LOT of changes. While I hated the individual portfolio management reading with the ingers I spent so much time on it and had it down. I also had the institutional reading down. That’s gone. Econ cme from last year is gone thankfully, worst written reading in history, I looked at the new econ readings and they look much better. Alts looks harder. And derivatives look easier, they got rid of that insidious interest rate option section I wasted hours on. Overall at first glance the curriculum looks better, I’m just upset they changed individual and institutional because they were ALWAYS in the am and the questions were pretty much the same every single year. It was a gift that is gone now. Its weird that they had the spending needs/irr question every single year for 15 plus years and now its gone completely. If it was so important to have it every year why trash it? Anyone else have an.opinion on the new curriculum?
Sorry to hear. I would recommend taking LevelUp bootcamp with Marc A. LeFebvre. I passed with a big margin and largely attribute my success to him. I also took Kaplan but they are Not good for level 3. Good luck in 2020! You will do it.
At first I was disappointment because they remove many chapters and add 14 new and GIPS is transfered from rebalancing part 5% points to ethics 15%. But then I read them closely they remove the illogical parts and add better ones.
Unfortunately, you probably got caught in a few traps. There were landmines all over the exam (both am and pm) and it was easy to step on them and not realize it. A few questions, I had changed afterwards and was like wow, good thing I went over that again.
Yes I remember Econ traps well. Keep at it was in your boat last year and couldn’t grasp what to do. Ended up improving my AM by 15 to 20 % and that is what makes the difference
Definitely remember a few Econ PM traps. Easy to fall for them if you were on cruise control and not paying attention. Sounds like you have a good handle on things otherwise. Keep at it.
there needs to be levelup police - every level up user is sub 10 posts and it’s been that way for years the dude is worse at sneaking around than an elephant
All I remember from Econ is I briefly reviewed a topic the day before that I didn’t really know and honestly thought was too specific to show up but just did it anyway and it did show up and I could not believe it. As for traps, the one that sticks out to me the most was in a PM fixed income. And it was a dirty one.
I second everything in this post!
There’s no correlation between post count and success from LevelUp. I’ve failed L1 and L2 twice. I also failed L3 last year. The only thing that got me over the edge by a comfortable amount was doing Marc’s SF Bootcamp.
Now, go count my post count or just take my word for it. Kaplan is a joke. I’ve dumped thousands of dollars into their crap for years and their L3 material was an absolute joke. CFAI material and LevelUp and it’ll be one and done…
Somehow I don’t remember one single trap. Maybe I fell into all of them lol.
I remember at least 3 PM questions and one AM Econ Q that were nuanced to where it would have been very easy to take a specific “obvious” answer that was wrong
I am probably sub 10 posts and I took LevelUp. Long time lurker, just didn’t post much.
I thought I nailed Econ down to a tee, but scored only 50% in the exam.
No point giving up now, since your score is close to the MPS you likely have a good chance of clearing it next year. I guess it really depends on how badly you want the charter, what value it adds to your life, ego, etc.
Read the CFAI book + get the Mark Meldrum video package for $280 and you will pass.
You really don’t need the thousand dollar LevelUp package to pass this exam. If you know the material well there are no traps… 
Entirely agree with it. And not just Econ, some other session you definitely need to have a second glance on it. Also, I feel that the person who wrote the exam knew that all candidates have prepared a lot. So you need to not have just one step ahead of it, instead two steps ahead of it. But overall. as long as you are crystal clear of the content, you would be fine.
haha same here. After L2 everyone was talking about landmines all over the place and I almost shat myself thinking that I stepped on them. Same thing this year. Noticed maybe 1 or 2.
Yeah, when everyone was mentioning landmines I thought to myself “what landmines”?. Well, I stepped in them and it caused me to fail but the tiniest of margins. Can someone give an example of a sneaky tricky question. I honestly don’t even understand what you guys mean. I’d like to be able to understand so I could recognize one in the future.
+1