Mark Meldrum mock exams

CEO10K-DAY · March 3, 2019, 3:28am

Hi Mark,

Sounds like you’re “too good” for the charter?

My apologies. Carry on.

steve11 · March 3, 2019, 3:04pm

For those that have bought Mark Meldrum’s mock exams, how was the quality of the mocks? How close are they to the real deal and are they worth buying?

125mph · March 3, 2019, 7:13pm

ive taken the first exam of 4. Quality is great for the price. Explanation on answers are through. The difficulty is harder than i believe the exam to be.

for reference i scored 85% on kaplan pm mock exam 1 and scored 63% on mark’s exam1 pm.

the am questions are great practice

S2000magician · March 8, 2019, 1:24am

125mph:

I just took the MM Exam1 PM… After finishing it, I thought wow that was easy. I think I scored at least 90%. But after doing the results, scored the lowest of all the mocks I’ve taken by far… My feedback:

1.) Minor details in a single word that I missed in the story cause me to miss many question. To me, this is more of a “I got tricked” and typically isn’t part of the real exam

2.) The explanation in the answer guides were very good, above and beyond any mocks I’ve taken

3.) Great material for learning… Will do the Exam1 AM tomorrow.

4.) You got a lot of strange names in the stories… Amrabat? Al Jassam? lol

5.) Three potential errors I saw:

#26: “Diversification: Adding equities to a bond portfolio will likely reduce volatility…”. Is this really accurate? Shouldn’t the standard deviation increase if the portfolio is simply FI, adding equities will surely increase volatility. Sure, there is a diversification benefit but I think the statement is incorrect? Now if it was going from an Equity portfolio, adding bonds would lower volatile of the portfolio.

#40: I believe the strikes on floor and caps in the curriculum usually pay off based on Libor, not based on Libor + X-bps. The effective interest paid would obviously be based on X-bps offset by the floor/cap. Am I right?

#43: I believe limit orders do not always have expirations. You can set it to “Limit order GTC”, which would not have an expiration. Maybe I missed something in the story.

I need to be chary in threads about Mark’s stuff because I cannot risk appearing to be promoting it. AnalystForum has rules about that sort of thing, and properly so.

I’ll address the first point here; the rest we’ll have to take off-line.

Yes: adding equities to a fixed income portfolio can reduce the volatility of the portfolio’s returns. I just grabbed a couple of funds: a government bond fund and some sort of equity fund. The volatility of returns on the equities is almost eight times the volatility of returns on the bonds, but adding just 1% equities to the pure bond portfolio reduces the volatility of returns of the portfolio. That’s the diversification benefit.

So, when you say that “adding equities will surely increase volatility”, you’re mistaken. I’ve analyzed literally thousands of these portfolios, and the usual effect of adding a small amount of equity to a fixed income portfolio is an increase in the expected return and a decrease in the volatility of returns.

harry5465 · March 9, 2019, 7:28pm

Where are the MM exams on the site? I have the subscription but don’t see the exams? Thanks for any direction.

Codtrawler87 · March 9, 2019, 8:11pm

they’re in the pdf download part 2. Same place as the pdf notes. I had trouble finding them as well.

harry5465 · March 10, 2019, 4:34pm

Much obliged! Best of luck!

125mph · March 11, 2019, 9:09pm

I just did the Mock #2 AM…

Holy cow, I finally got the pre-tax return calculated correctly! (question #1 part C).

S2000magician · March 11, 2019, 9:19pm

Cool!

125mph · March 13, 2019, 9:24pm

Just missed another one of these questions… barely… Tell me if this is wrong or not:

From Kaplan mock:

“All income and realized capital gains are taxed at 25%. The assumed annual effective tax rate is 20%”.

So in this case, I assumed unrealized gains were not taxed, so only withdraws from the investment would be taxed. So I took the Required Income Divide by asset base, then removed taxes, and then added inflation.

The solution added inflation and then divided by (1-.2) = .80.

So in this case effective tax rate was the key word and that must be deducted from the inflation as well?

S2000magician · March 13, 2019, 9:33pm

I have no idea what they mean by “the assumed annual effective tax rate is 20%”, but I do know that it’s not a phrase that you will see on the real exam.

They’re trying to be tricky here. CFA Institute does not try to be tricky. If CFA Institute wants you to apply a tax rate of 20% to all investment returns, they’ll say that a 20% tax rate applies to all investment returns.

I hate it when prep providers try to be clever and end up with stupid stuff like this.

foshizzle · March 19, 2019, 7:32am

how do these mocks compare to the real thing?

pchris89 · April 13, 2019, 6:58am

Hi,

apologies if this has been asked already but has anyone looked at the exam walkthroughs? i’m wondering how these were and how many past questions/examples they go over? thinking about purchasing them to make sure i’m heading in the right direction for the big day. really don’t want to go into the exam with the wrong approach for the constructed response qs.

cheers

125mph · April 13, 2019, 1:02pm

For the price, they are sn awesome deal. I think they are harder than the past papers but i picked up many things i overlooked from the reading text so I think it has better prepared me

sydneyguy · April 17, 2019, 11:43am

Mark_Meldrum:

In response to CEO10K-DAY

I guess I should address this:

Mark Meldrum here. Let me first point out that the only true CFA body of knowledge is the Code and Standards and GIPS. All the rest is borrowed from the field of finance. All of it. There is nothing in any CFAI reading that has not been borrowed quite heavily from any widely available finance textbook. In fact, the treatment of the topics in the CFAI readings is quite light compared to a more rigorous course, which is the standard at a Master’s level, at least at a school that matters. So while a CFA charter may be enough for a Prep Provider, it would not be enough at a University Level. If you strip away everything from the CFAI books that can be found in more rigorous textbooks, all that would be left is Ethics and GIPS.

Point 2: This relates to a point you make further down this thread about putting in the time. All three levels of CFA would require about 1000 hours of study. That is 6 months of full time work at 8 hours a day. A PhD requires 4 to 5 years of much more than 8 hours a day. Want to test your willingness to put in the time - write a dissertation. There is no such thing as a 70% passing score there, not even close. Or, show up at my office at 6:30 am (don’t be late) and count how many hours a day I put in on CFA content. I would love nothing more than to have the time NOT to put in each day.

Point 3: There is nothing in the CFA program that prepares you to teach. Nothing that touches on epistemology or pedagogy. Nothing that discusses the science of assessment. Nothing that prepares you to write assessments. There is no CFA way to learn, no CFA way to teach. Learning has been the same for 5,000 years, no matter what you are learning. And teaching is not about telling people what you know, it is about telling people HOW to know what you know. I have had full charter holders attempt to write content for my site with very little success. Very few can do it, and those that can typically come from academia. That is important since you need someone that understands the process of learning, can anticipate where the challenges are, knows how to convey sometimes difficult concepts in a more accessible way. I have seen a lot a CFA instructors, full charter holders, reading their words off a PowerPoint and calling that teaching. Its not!

I will put myself up against any charter holder, in the classroom and on the street. For some of them, I’ll even give them a head start.

Think of a charter holder as brandy and a PhD as cognac. All cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is cognac. Be careful abut how much pride you place in what’s in your bottle.

Hi Mark,

Appreciate all the time and efforts you have put in in all your CFA Level 1 and Level 2 content. Thanks a million for all your help and support. Your way of teaching is amazing. Thanks.

Codtrawler87 · April 29, 2019, 5:22pm

Hi y’all

About to do the first of Meldrum’s mocks this weekend. For those of you have done a few of them: how are they time management wise? Close to the real thing? Are the questions doable within the allotted time?

Last year for LII I did some 3rd party mocks (Schweser?) where there was so much pure calculation required for some of the questions that it was impossible to answer them in 3minutes.

125mph · April 29, 2019, 6:06pm

I thought the exam #1 was the toughest. #4 is the easiest. Overall, I felt they are tougher than the CFAI published papers. Tough to finish these with the 3 hour window.

TrackSuitInvestor · May 3, 2019, 8:49pm

Just finished the AM section of exam #1… so far I’m very impressed by the quality.

The exam was very clear/understandable and difficult in the “right” way --> the questions were challenging because the material/calculations were difficult and tested your understanding of the concepts…not because you were confused what they were asking (as it is the case with Schweser quite often).

Thanks @S2000magician!

S2000magician · May 3, 2019, 11:27pm

My pleasure.

Thanks for your kind assessment.

Codtrawler87 · May 4, 2019, 5:03pm

Just got done with the first exam. Very impressed with the quality. The outlay, wording, problems are very similar to the real CFAI problems + with some added difficulty.

I scored 54% in the AM and 74% in the PM. The AM paper definitely brought up stuff that I need to get more in-depth understanding on.