I am just getting pulled ways and losing invaluble time on anxiety. I dont have much time left to practice exams but have made myself familar with item set format.
Should I focus more on reading very testable concepts and formulae last minute or doing some practice ??
Also finally I know it might sound like a silly questions but…
Does the actual level 2 exam have a easy ones like for Level 1 ?
Is it going to be more of a memory overkill or conceptual understanding test ?
I really really dread going through the 1st couple of item sets that may test something that I might have done sparsely can recollect the concepts but dont remember it very well .
It’s like that for many of us. I’ve taken the exam before, it’s just plain difficult. Suggest you spend the rest of the time doing mock exams and study the areas you miss out on by checking the answer description and walk through the suggested solution. That’s what I’m doing now.
I did a Schweser mock exam just now (Book 2, exam 1, PM) and was tripped up on little things like not properly reading the “un-” in unsystematic, then I forgot to convert a discount rate to continuous and also misstated the number (like 4,0801 as 4,801) when I punched the rate into the calculator right before taking the logarithm. During mock exams I might also occasionally have difficulties selecting the LEAST likely alternative so if I see a question like that I try to figure out the TWO MOST likely alternatives first, and mark them with a plus sign in the margin. Then I see if the remaining one could be the LEAST likely… Naturally I forget things like squaring when multiplying the adjusted forecasting ability (regressed) for the analysts ability when figuring out weights in the active portfolio of Treynor Black. The performance tracker is pretty good though.
Also: there’s a year next year too if you should miss it. Don’t forget.
concepts liiike… under US GAAP they have a special little category called “held at fair value”, whereas under IFRS it’s called “fair value through profit or loss”? concepts like the pooling of interest method was discontinued in 2008, and is the exact same as the acquisition method except it doesn’t write assets up to fair value? or perhaps that US GAAP balance sheet for the pension is a 1 line consolidation that shows the funded status, but under IFRS the unamortized past service cost is shown on the balance sheet (but not the income statement), but the unamortized actuarial gains/losses are not shown on the balance sheet?
FRA=memory
not to mention ibbotson-chen model, and the specific inputs in the build up model… u memorize nao
I didn’t do too good on that particular exam, slightly below average (ackording to Schweser’s performance tracker). For some other exams I scored around 80% at best.
I’m doing the Schweser live mock exam now (it’s not in the books).
Ibbotson-Chen, ugh… isn’t that the one for equity risk premium where you first multiply “inflation” “GDP” “PEg” and then add “stock index yield” and finally deduct “risk free rate”? All the while adjusting for the fact that you express it as (1+r) when multiplying and as plain percentages when adding/subtracting. It reminds me of Fisher! (1+r nom) = (1 + r real)(1 + inflation) except you multiply also with the PEg rate. You have to add the stock index since you’re looking for the equity risk premium so the stock index minus risk free rate will get part of the general risk premium and the Fisher and PEg stuff seems to relate to the economy in general and wether or not the company is overvalued.
As for “PEg” remember: when market is overvaluing the stock, P/E would decrease and revert to something fairly valued, so PEg < 0.