Hi All,
I have started doing FI but i think schwesers has not done a good job here… I have done FRA, Equity, Alt Inv., Eco, Corp Fin from Schwesers + CFA EOC so far…
I don know if I have enough time to do FI from CFA text, as I plan to do review + mocks in May… would appreciate if u share ur thoughts for FI from your experience… Thanks!!
FI is an important area and if understood in a better way can help in scoring good marks. Fortunately it was the first area from where I had started and did not find Scheweser that appealing there (though in Equity Schweser has done a very nice job). I had switched to finquiz curriculum notes and have found their material pretty appealing especially in understanding MBS & ABS.
I used CFAI and found it very clear. Schweser videos did a pretty good job too. The good news is that you can get on top of this stuff in a week easy. There are not lots of formulas and even some overlap with Options (binomial models). I think it is an easy place to pick up points. Where Derivatives is a ton of reading with formulas and difficult concepts (after forwards and futures). I think they may be weighted similarly. If so, then what I would do is focus on the easy debt stuff and the easy Derivatives material. That would be a good hedge so you are sure to not get skunked on a whole item set.
If it’s like 2011, you can sidestep some of FI with Schweser, but the last Fabozzi CFAI reading shouldn’t be missed. Also Fabozzi’s a great author.
Thanks all! I am going through CFA text and finding it much better… its taking a bit longer though, but dere r no shortcuts i guess.
I just finished going through the FI material today and also found Schweser to be lacking significantly. I work in fixed income and as such was able to cruise through the CFAI text with relative ease, but for anyone else who actually wants to learn something I’d highly recommend spending some time to do the same. Schweser really fell down on the review questions IMO, I found one clear error and at least a couple others were up for debate.