I am a CFA level 1 candidate preparing for Dec 2008 exam. I have little exposure to the finance world. I happened to hear that the book named First lesson in Management Accounting and Financial Analysis by V.Pattabhi Ram and S.D. Bala gives a sound basic knowledge for the new comers into finance. Do you have any feedback.
I do not have a financial background either but i’ve realised that concentrating on the curriculum materials will give you the required knowledge. Reading extra books might take up lots of time…Remeber time is so crucial here. Its 168 days to the paper.
yea i don’t have a finance background but have been working for a year and the cfai books are pretty thorough.
uhohcfa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > yea i don’t have a finance background but have > been working for a year and the cfai books are > pretty thorough. I will desagree with all of you. Having a finance culture or a background is a serious help you will need to understand the material. going cold on the curriculum is risky, you might learn the stuff but understand it and put it all into order to grab and understand how it all works together in a way is another problem… for exemple, the Econn is straight advanced i have found, and what i have learned before helped quite a lot! Also, i guess you are considering the CFA for a career change into finance, based on that, any additionnal knowledge of finance you can get will only help you.
Stick to the material… you will have to work harder than a typical finance person but its doable. If you get stuck anywhere, this forum is great or google is good too. Over all the material does a pretty good job though so dont waste time on reference books my 2 cents 
thats why i mentioned the work experience as helpful
dont waste time on other book, stick to cfai text . all the stuff is straight forward except fsa , where with non finance is bit tricky . there are buzzz words which if you google and read again u will understand. dont loose hope work vvvv hard and crack the bloody thing in 1 round
I found the detail in CFAI text as a non-finance person overwhelming. Schweser got to the damn point and fast. The test isn’t about background. It will nail you on exactly what the LOS ask for and Schweser gets to those points and hammers them home. Use CFAI if you didn’t understand Schweser, but in general, it just blathers on and on and doesn’t get to the point at all. I have a Biology degree and scored 77% on the Level I CFAI mock exam the night before the June 08 test. Schweser rocks, and grab some Stalla flashcards. It will take hundreds and hundreds of hours tho but it is possible. Good luck.
Nothing in the curriculum is advanced as somebody stated above. Just pick up any academic journal on any topic in the readings, even ethics, for proof. I do agree however that having the finance background is critical for level one. The exam is very conceptual. Therefore, even though the concepts may not be rocket science, most questions require you to have an inside out, forwards and backwards understanding of the concept. I personally felt very grateful to have spent the last 5 years either studying or working in finance. There was not a single concept for which I had not at least had a brief introduction. Most concepts, however, were complete rehashes of undergrad. Therefore, I was able to focus on increasing my depth of the materials i.e. how to think about them and their treatments under different scenarios and assumptions. Fortunately, exam questions are based on such thought. Regardless, the exam is doable. Plenty of non finance folks pass every year. I imagine they work harder and probably have a lower passing rate relative to those finance folks who make a similar effort to study.
I being a Nonfinance guy, appeared in june this time. I strongly believe that concentrating on other ref. books other than CFAI / Schweser / Stalla would certainly be risky. Thinking that you have less than 6 mnths to go…prob you should try to read the subject books twice and get the hold. Anyway what date is the Dec exam?
Schweser (or Stalla) and CFAI textbooks ONLY! Forget about other finance books for Level 1, they are effectively worthless especially when you are under such a study time crunch. If under severe time pressure…choose Schweser/Stalla first, but it would be ideal to go through either of them in conjunction with the CFA textbooks (though some people have finished all three levels with just Schweser/Stalla…I am not choosing that route). Do a lot of problems, this is the key and the make/break point. Get Schweser/Stalla question bank and continually drill. If you need to choose between reading and questions, do questions to understand the particular concept and review…your knowledge base will grow faster than you expect. Reading can easily degrade into a passive activity, whereas answering questions force you to be active in your learning and retention process. Another thing to keep in mind is that passing Level 1 means “nothing” except as preparation for the harder levels 2 and 3 coming up…so your secondary goal is to build up a strong foundation to avoid having to take these levels multiple times.
glad to hear it b/c i suspected the same and cheaped out on buying both cfai and schweser, just got schweser.
VodkaTonic Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > glad to hear it b/c i suspected the same and > cheaped out on buying both cfai and schweser, just > got schweser. The CFAI books come with the exam registration.