While I do think the CFA charter is a minimum, I am beginning to think that a greater number of charterholders could have completed almost any other major credentialing program than vice versa. Whether it’s accounting, law, medicine, airline transport pilot, whatever. Yes, I know these others are legal certifications, but you get the drift. I probably wouldn’t include PE(professional engineer) or actuary. I’m definitely not a CFA fanboy, but it’s tough to be a dunce and get through the program. Many people with 23 MCATS are doctors for example and many people with 580 gmats are charterholders, but the medical boards just aren’t that hard nor is the Bar. And we all ready covered CPAs. Ok. Completely pointless and meaniless exercise , but this kind of shit enters my brain now and then.
So you think CFA program is harder than completing medical school?
It took me until L3 when I found out it wasn’t a CFP program.
wtf am i supposed to do with a CFA? so much wasted time
Graduation rates of U.S. medical schools are very high. The faculty will work hand over fist to get people through. Many of the minority students are very mediocre, just a fact, standards are lower, and they get through. Yes, more charterholders would get through med school than MDs would get the charter. US Charterholders as a group are not nearly as diverse, in terms of sex and geographical descent, as US MDs though.
Do you know what Section 179 depreciation is? Or why income from Schedule E is taxed differently from income on a Schedule C?
A tax accountant would consider these two questions to be extremely basic. (Note–this is limited to tax accounting, not financial accounting. These are two very different monsters.)
Bro, if you’re an adult and you’ve never heard of a hedge fund…i’d probably call you a turd
But US doctors are wiser. If money was the goal, the risk adjusted returns are much greater in medicine, including opportunity cost and the cost of school. Between wages and profits from their partnerships, md income is vastly underreported and everyone of them makes decent money. Can’t be said for a charterholder.
There’s a difference between hearing about a hedge fund and really understanding what a hedge fund is.
It’s kinda like trigonometry, quantum physics, molecular biology, or organic chemistry. I have heard all these terms thrown around, but don’t really know anything about any of them. Certainly don’t know any of the terms associated with them. The extent of my knowledge of trig is sign (like a stop sign), co-sign (on a loan), and tangent (when people start talking about something unrelated to the topic at hand).
As noted before, most CPAs take a basic corporate finance class as part of their undergrad curriculum. This is generally limited to compounding, discounting, and maybe a little Gordon Growth Model. There’s no reason they should know what “2 and 20” or “distribuion yield” is.
I’m willing to bet that the top CFA or CPA type people would fare equally well, on average, in other fields. There is a problem with the MCAT and GMAT arguments, though. Most people who scored a 23 on their MCAT(or another score near the average MCAT score) ended up having to attend foreign medical schools (for-profits in the caribbean, for example). Many of them don’t end up practicing in the US, and if they do, you can easily see this in their background info which is readily accessible. Similarly, the GMAT isn’t rocket science or an IQ test. People who don’t get stellar scores are much less likely to get into top programs, and you can usually see where they went to school.
What’s your source for the difficulty of the medical boards or bar? I’ve heard many people who took the BAR say it’s pretty easy, but I haven’t heard anyone say the same about medical board exams (some people took both).
Aren’t treasury securities covered in the basic finance classes a future accountant must take in college? I’m not saying a CPA should know everything there is to know about treasuries, but they should at least have heard of them, no?
Out of curiosity, what first-hand experience do you have with medical education? While it is true that many schools do have faculty that do their best to get students through, many don’t care as much. Too much time and too much money are wasted if a student drops. If you got into the school, nearly every time, you have what it takes to finish.
This is (probably) laughable. Medical students face a much greater volume of information in a much shorter period of time (and everything is fair game, and what you don’t learn, you will need later) than someone in the CFA program (and medical school builds, the CFA program tells you only the books at each level are relevant to the specific exam). If you put them in equivalent scenarios (i.e. your job is to study and be a student, not have a job, except medical students are engaged in a lot of quasi-voluntary work beyond studying), at best the charterholder group would do no worse in medical school than the MDs. To make the claim otherwise without data is pretty silly. If you have knowledge of both programs, you’d be foolish to make that claim of better pass rates for charterholders.
_ Very _ mediocre?
As opposed to being only somewhat mediocre? Or extremely mediocre?
I, for one, didn’t realize that there were degrees of mediocrity.
i would think that tax accountants in particular should have an idea about what type of income every security on the planet would most likely produce. i mean, they know the difference between interest, dividends and capital gains. why not know whether a hedge fund pays a distribution and how that would be taxed…
it’s not in the CFA cirriculum because the CFA cirriculum is global but if you don’t know the tax rates in your country and what securities produce what income, you’re not going to make a very good CFA.
@Higgs - My major is actually finance, so I can’t recall correctly. But I don’t believe treasuries (or short- vs. long-duration bonds or maturities) is covered in the basic finance courses. Bond pricing is, but only in the very basic sense. How certain types of bonds behave what types of issue are available is not normally covered. (I don’t think.)
Why would we need to know what type of income every security on the planet would most likely produce? We get a 1099 that tells us what we need to know. If the 1099 says “Johnny got $89 in interest, $412 in dividends (380 of which is qualified), and a $242 capital gain distribution”, then that’s what we’re going to put on the tax return. Sure, we know how qualified dividends and LTCG and muni interest should be taxed, but we’re blissfully unaware of which securities pay which kind of income. (And we don’t care, because it’s on the 1099.)
Let me also add–this is one of the reasons why I want to get into the asset-management business. I feel like when CPA’s don’t know these kinds of things, they are doing their clients a disservice. Better to deal with one person who understands both tax and investments, rather than deal with two separate people.
But right, wrong, or indifferent, most CPA’s don’t care what a client’s portfolio is. It’s not their job.
^ok man when are you going out on your own? i feel like everyone here is waiting for you to do it
LOL! Levels of mediocrity i like it
To put it in perspective for some post on the first page, I got a 24 on my mcat, twice. Didn’t make it to med school. I did CFA in 2 years, start to finish, without ever taking a finance course, no clue about what TVM was, how finance calcs worked, only 1 accounting from like 4-5 years ago. Only had 2-3 sections that weren’t >70%, 10/10 on level 2 with 4 mo of prep. CFA was very very easy compared to pre-med, for me at least. Also, Med school is much harder than premed. It’s cliche but they told us, premed was like drinking water out of a garden hose, med school like out of a fire hydrant.
Adjective mediocre (comparative more mediocre,superlative most mediocre) Having no peculiar or outstanding features; not extraordinary, special, exceptional, orgreat; of medium quality. “The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.” Simone de Beauvoir