Just planning my out my study. I’d like to ask the people who have taken the exam before which sections do we have to especially spend more time studying? I know every section counts but which ones take the longest to master?
I’m sure everyone has their own area but mine was Capital Markets. If you can master CME and the interactions/behaviors of the asset classes than you are in some manner touching a majority of the curriculum.
Private Wealth Management and Institutional Wealth Management generally show up as high-point questions in the morning session; you could do a lot worse than to spend a lot of time on those.
i spent a lot of time on individual and institution ips practices. there are always subtle details you could miss, so do a lot of practice would definitely help.
You have a year. I would study all the topics. Which is harder for each person is an individual thing, but for L3 I found a lot of repetition, commonality, and interchangability. Going in order probably makes those things easier to understand.
Mr.David Heatherington came up with this number of creating practising something like 16+ IPS questions. He was correct imho, practising as many IPS questions all by yourself - instead of looking at the book and reading the answers (which gives you the feeling “yeah this is how I would have any way answered” or “oh that makes complete sense”). Dont do yourself the disservice by reading the IPS answer without doing it once yourself.
Following the order of the book is a decent strategy. and allows you to slowly fit in the smaller parts into the bigger picture…
There was a particular advice from Chikken Tikka (dont know what he is doing now), that you should write down things which you think will for sure repeat in the exam. This is very very true (sorry but I can give out pointers of what they are) - you can see questions on these topics coming across all prep providers and old CFAI questions papers. Prepare this list and solve problems on them and keep adding to this list. IMHO this is the way to prepare for FI, Equity, CME etc… I am sure this strategy also benefited me - from a band 10 last year to pass quite easily this year.
Most have suggested starting with the Private & Institutional wealth management. My point was I believe those sections to be much easier when you fully understand Capital Markets and impact on asset class interactions, selection, etc.