Haha, I laughed and enjoyed myself at the LA test center. Such a vast array of wackos. I saw guys wearing crap that glittered or shined. One guy had little beads on his shirt that were reflective. Saw the same 45 blue polo shirts with the red horse. Pretty sure half the people there could only speak limited English. Quite a few fanny packs. Worse than trying to herd chickens trying to get out of there. And if you were the guy in my section that tried to lecture everyone in the back on different concepts once the test was over… I hate you. I was bleeding from the hears. Your voice is horrific. Don’t ever laugh again. Worst 20 mins of my life. I took my time on both tests. Finished with about 45 mins left on both and just went through trying to catch mistakes. I don’t want to get ahead of myself though and jinx myself. I did not feel they were exceptionally hard though. The only question I saw that pissed me off was the Herfindahl-Index. I remember reading it in the book 6-7 months ago, remembering it saying it was pretty much worthless. Never saw a practice question on it in the thousands that I took… I hope you all had fun too 
(Hello, I never post much on this site but just took L1 for the 2nd time) I finished both sections with about an hour to spare each. for the AM section I stayed for the extra hour and went over some of my answers, but by the afternoon I was like, f-this, and left half an hour early after thinking through some questions again. Took the test in Dec for the first time. Thought it was much harder then. But then again, I knew less…har har.
raw Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Haha, I laughed and enjoyed myself at the LA test > center. Such a vast array of wackos. I saw guys > wearing crap that glittered or shined. One guy > had little beads on his shirt that were > reflective. Saw the same 45 blue polo shirts with > the red horse. Pretty sure half the people there > could only speak limited English. Quite a few > fanny packs. Worse than trying to herd chickens > trying to get out of there. > > And if you were the guy in my section that tried > to lecture everyone in the back on different > concepts once the test was over… I hate you. I > was bleeding from the hears. Your voice is > horrific. Don’t ever laugh again. Worst 20 mins > of my life. > > I took my time on both tests. Finished with about > 45 mins left on both and just went through trying > to catch mistakes. I don’t want to get ahead of > myself though and jinx myself. I did not feel > they were exceptionally hard though. The only > question I saw that pissed me off was the > Herfindahl-Index. I remember reading it in the > book 6-7 months ago, remembering it saying it was > pretty much worthless. Never saw a practice > question on it in the thousands that I took… > > I hope you all had fun too LOL AM and PM at my site there were a couple of sections where the proctors were taking forever to count. left the room at 12:30 in the AM - shoot me! For PM the same thing happened but they released one section at a time and luckily mine was first. Found it ironic that a room full on finance peeps had to wait for people to figure out how to count! We could have done a full statistical analysis in the same amount of time, one with normal distribution - of course.
Finished AM with around 30 mins to spare and PM with about an hour. Found AM Ethics and Quant, PM CF to be relatively harder than any other section of the entire paper. In AM, changed 3-4 answers coz of better call of intuition and PM found 2 outright mistakes. Glad that I didnt leave earlier in PM about which I was contemplating big time. I knew my spouse would scold me if I moved out early for not valuing such valuable time I enjoyed FRA, found it to be much easier than what schweser prepares us for. Hope have got answers right.
Finished AM with around 30 mins to spare and PM with about an hour. Found AM Ethics and Quant, PM CF to be relatively harder than any other section of the entire paper. In AM, changed 3-4 answers coz of better call of intuition and PM found 2 outright mistakes. Glad that I didnt leave earlier in PM about which I was contemplating big time. I knew my spouse would scold me if I moved out early for not valuing such valuable time I enjoyed FRA, found it to be much easier than what schweser prepares us for. Hope have got answers right.
Was anyone else surprised that the PM section of FSA was all IFRS?
Finished AM in 1 hour 45 mins. PM in a little less than 2 hours. So is it true that CFAI switches the AM and PM exam for some people?
Did anyone notice that there was relatively very low derivative options presence (call, xcise and european rfr etc)? especially the PM section?
I was disappointed there wasn’t a trade discount question. I struggled with that because I never took the time to memorize THAT formula. I did last week and not a question! dang
you mean 2/10-45 or such discount? I havent seen any either. Are you saying there was one?
There was a trade discount question on the Mock, but not the real test. I finished the AM in an hour and 45 minutes, and the PM in an hour and a half. To be honest, I found it pretty simple overall. I did spend an hour on each reviewing and catching mistakes, and I made a few dumb ones. Lending on the CML INCREASES risk… yeah, good thing I caught that one, haha.
Yeah that was a good catch. Portfolio management in general seemed pretty easy. The thing I also realized was go back to the post on December results or last June results. Pass rate may be 30% but if you look at Analyst forum it is probably closer to 80-85%. I can see why the pass rate is so low, in another thread I was talking about how the four people around me were trying to “get into finance” and thought the CFA would be a good start. They however had approximately 100 hours in aggregate between the four of them. The one guy however drank 3 of those huge redbull (20 oz?) before the exam. I am not 100% confident but logic leads me to believer that is not good for you.
Paraguay Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > The one guy however drank 3 of those huge redbull > (20 oz?) before the exam. I am not 100% confident > but logic leads me to believer that is not good > for you. If I did that, I would have needed a bathroom break every 10 minutes. I made sure to limit how much I drank. I also made sure to a eat light, low fat, low sodium breakfast and lunch. The low sodium part was important to stave off dehydration and the need to drink more. The low fat part was important so that I wouldn’t get that heavy, sluggish, sleepy feeling. I also made sure the food I ate (oat bran muffins, dried fruit, peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole grain bread) was high in whole grains and fiber but low in added sugar so I could keep my blood sugar stable… In contrast, I saw a few people drinking coffee or Coke. I wonder how many bathroom breaks they needed, and I wondered how long the sugar rush lasted.
I had a cup of coffee before each exam, and had to go to the bathroom once during the morning exam. However, I was in a small test center, so I was in and out in 5 minutes, and had plenty of time to spare anyway. I had a cup of coffee before ever practice exam I did leading up to it, so I wanted to keep it up. I may have crashed due to lack of caffeine, so who knows.
I also had a full can of red bull right before the exam, but not 3. That’s just bloody overkill. I’m trying to go cold turkey on that stuff now…sooooo coldd…
I struggled to get finished with the exam in the 3 hour allotment. In December I was done at least an hour early in both sessions. I also came out of the December exam thinking that I aced it (which I did not). I think the difference this time was me. I spent a lot of my exam time re-reading the questions and looking for what they were really asking for. In December I did not do that. Let me give an example… A person is offered a $35,000 perpetuity starting a year from now or an $800,000 lump sum payment in 3 years. Using a discount rate of 5% is the present value of the perpetuity: 1) less than the present value of the lump sum 2) equal to the present value of the lump sum 3) greater than present value of the lump sum Now, the math will tell you the PV of the annuity is $700,000 and the PV of the lump sum is $691,000 which on a first pass of the question will tell you its answer 3. But reading the question closely states the perpetuity starts a year from now which requires discounting the PV back 1 more year. It comes out to $666,666. The correct answer is 1. I think a lot of people will wind up missing a question like that on the exam. I found many questions like this on the exam and spent a lot of time making sure I was reading the questions correctly. I dont have a good feeling about passing this time so I dont know about that. But I do think that I had a much better handle on the way the institute asks questions. By the way: I think schweser did a horrible job with the test prep this year. It fell way short. just my opinion though. Good luck everyone.
I felt very prepared using mostly schweser with the exception of FRA & Ethics.
cfacowtown Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I felt very prepared using mostly schweser with > the exception of FRA & Ethics. Me too. This was my first time sitting for the exam, so I have nothing to compare it to, but Schweser material (notes, practice exams, qbank) were very helpful to me. I didn’t use it for ethics, though, just the CFAI material on that section.
I had coffee 40 minutes before my afternoon session, a half cup though. I visited bathroom 15 minutes before the exam and that’s it. Because I had coffee after a month, the sugar and caffeine rush lasted till midnight that day 
Your logic SOUNDED reasonable, but it contradicted my understanding of a perpetuity, so I checked. Luckily for me, bummer for you, the perpetuity formula A/r does start 1 period (year) from now, so your original calculation was correct, not your reassessment. See bottom of page 194 in the Quant book: “first payment a year from now…”