AM: 60%+ PM: 70%+ when I walked out of the AM I actually thought I did pretty well. I knew I bombed the last question and the cash and carry, but feel I got at least 60% of all the other questions including 100% on some others. Here are the errors I feel I made in AM: Question 1: Screwed up the return on the 2nd Part plugging in the wrong signs in my calculator. Also am not sure if they were average or above average. Assume 60%. DB Question: screwed up liquidity requirement and excess return objective. Also wasn’t sure about appropriate ness of rfr. Assume 60%. 2nd DB Question: was a little vague in my answer for ALM vs AO. All other answers I felt confident about. Assume 65%. Cash and Carry: probably only got a few points: conservatively assume zero points Hedged vs unhedged return (last question): realized that hedged would outperform unhedged but calculations are likely incorrect. conservatively assume zero points Spread analysis/Immunization: made 1 mistake on the high coupon bond: said it would improve the portfolio when in actuality it probably was bad for the portfolio because of negative convexity. Assume 60%. Corner Portfolios: Believe I aced it but will conservatively assume 80%. Consistent/Inconsistent Managers and Interest Rate effects: believe I aced this one as well but will conservatively assume 80%. Trading STrategies: think I did well this one two but am unsure about ECN/Principal trade. WIll conservatively assume 65%. Firm/Counterparty Risk: think I nailed this one but will assume conservative 75%. I’m missing one question that I can’t recall right now, but given conservative assumptions, I think I got at least 60% in the AM. But of course who knows with CFA. PM Section: Worst case scenario I thought was 70% walking out of the exam. Have confirmed many right answers on my 50/50 choices. I think I’m closer to 80%+, but will conservatively assume 70%. But again who knows with CFA. I’d say I’m on the cusp with a score probably around 65%. At Level 3, I would assume the scores are more concentrated among candidates as your dealing with a pretty strong field.
I think my avg will be closer to 60, which will probably not be enough. equity_research_nds Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > abbe u think ur avg score of 65% is not a pass?
AM: ~50% PM: ~80% based on what I have seen here I think I probably failed though, because my AM score may be even lower than 50%.
AM~ 50% PM~ 80% i think i will make the grade but not by much hope this thread stays till aug so we can see how good evaluators are we 
Conservative estimates: AM: 45-65% PM: 55-75% I hope they keep the pass rate high this year. If 60% pass then I think I will make the cut. If it’s 40%, I’m not so sure.
AM 55-65% PM 75-85%
~50% AM (finished 10 questions, handwriting poor ) ~ 80% PM Pass or fail? I will be able to tell by end August.
OK, I just reviewed the PM thread, using the mosaic theory, and counted up what looks right and wrong. So far: Almost certainly right: 17 Almost certainly wrong: 7 (not quite as many as I thought; anchoring bias, perhaps?) Difficult to say: 6 Remaining: 30 So, assuming that I have a 50% chance of getting the “difficult to say” problems correct, that would make 20 correct, 10 wrong, or 66%. If this is representative of the “remaining” problems, that would suggest a 66% in the PM. However, the less challenging stuff probably never made it on to the thread, so 68% or 70% might be within reach. As for AM, it looks ugly. I’m hoping for 50%, but worried that even that might be optimistic.
how prepared did you feel, bchadwick? just curious if you feel there is any correlation between your preparation and performance. would another, say, 200 hours have shored up the morning for you?
I could have used another week. Mostly doing practice exams. Going in, I didn’t feel I was prepared, but when I came out, I realized I actually did know the material reasonably well. Very few of the problems I encountered were from genuinely not understanding the material. It was mostly “oops, forgot to add that in,” things that you can hammer out by making enough mistakes on practice problems. I think the only thing that really threw me for a loop was the implementation shorfall vs. VWAP comparison. And of course practice would help getting the answers faster. For me, I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of the material, that I spent too much time going through sections I didn’t feel I knew well enough, when, really, I should have been hammering out problems.
which problem source would you use, in hindsight? i used pretty much everything – end of chapter, CFAI tests, schweser vol 1 and 2 and qbank. I didn’t think that anything really captured the feel of the exam, but I suppose if I fail I will spend more time with the official CFAI exams next year in order to practice – they seem to be the best of the available options.
the BSAS exam was probably the best example I took.
AM: 40% PM: 85-95% I’m located in Los Angeles. I thought the PM was easy. I’ve only used Schweser Notes and audio CDs for all 3 tests. I thought the Schweser notes didn’t prepare me for the AM session, but definately were spot on for the PM session.
I did the Stalla practice problems and previous CFAI exams. As I said… I didn’t do enough, because I kept telling myself I didn’t want to do them without reviewing first. A silly psychological bias, since I knew from past experience that problem working is really one of the best ways to review toward the end. One thing which is really good about practice exams is that they help you focus on the distribution of your total knowledge. I think we all get freaked out about something like not knowing every step of the two-bond hedge (which didn’t appear), and forget that we know how to adjust portfolio duration and hedge currency risk and a bunch of other things that are much more likely to appear on the test. I’m comfortable not getting everything right. At the end of the day, the CFA designation is really like a driver’s license: you either have it or you don’t, and it doesn’t matter much whether you just squeaked by or banged out high scores on all exams 3 for 3. Everyone gets the same letters after their name if they make it through.
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > OK, I just reviewed the PM thread, using the > mosaic theory, and counted up what looks right and > wrong. > > So far: > > Almost certainly right: 17 > Almost certainly wrong: 7 (not quite as many as I > thought; anchoring bias, perhaps?) > Difficult to say: 6 > Remaining: 30 > > So, assuming that I have a 50% chance of getting > the “difficult to say” problems correct, that > would make 20 correct, 10 wrong, or 66%. > > If this is representative of the “remaining” > problems, that would suggest a 66% in the PM. > However, the less challenging stuff probably never > made it on to the thread, so 68% or 70% might be > within reach. > > > As for AM, it looks ugly. I’m hoping for 50%, but > worried that even that might be optimistic. can you provide the 7 you got wrong so I can compare, I know I stand at about 5ish.
s23dino Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > can you provide the 7 you got wrong so I can > compare, I know I stand at about 5ish. Not sure it will help you much, but here’s where I stumbled for sure 1) SRI problem, actually there may be a small chance that my choice is correct, but the CFAI text sounds unfavorable 2) spread break even. I guessed, since I couldn’t figure out which bonds we were comparing to begin with. I definitely didn’t get any of the consensus results. 3) currency hedged bond yield: I forgot to subtract the local RFR when comparing. 4) repo question. I figured that 1 day repo and 10 day repos would have more or less the same annual rate, and all the other stuff was important 5) GIPS returns over two years. I thought you should compute each year separately but went against my better judgement and computed a geometric average for both years. Silly, but I should have read GIPS a little more fully so as to understand the question better. 6) Implied difference between cost of capital and growth. I have no idea where this question came from. I interpreted cost of capital for the economy as RFR and growth as GDP growth and figured that it might be the ERP. -1 for me. 7) I remembered reading about ratios with concurrent economic indicators and that they seemed to be the best indicator of turns in the economy, but I couldn’t remember if the ratio was with leading indicators or lagging ones. As was said in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade… “he chose… poorly.”
Hey thanks, the consenous on the foreign currency was Japan, Japan, UK? I still dont understand how Japan can have highest hedged return UK had highest yield?
hedged return = domestic risk free rate + (foreign yield - foreign risk free rate) = domestic Rf + foreign excess return since Singapore Rf stays the same, whichever country has the highest excess return is the best one for full hedged return. For breakeven analysis, I just picked whichever that has the smallest duration., based on yield = delta(yield)/duration s23dino Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hey thanks, the consenous on the foreign currency > was Japan, Japan, UK? > > I still dont understand how Japan can have highest > hedged return UK had highest yield?
i dont understand that either s23, but currency is my weak topic… i thought you were supposed to take the bond with the highest yield and then just hedge out all the currency risk. there’s probably more to it than that though.
bluelily Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > hedged return = domestic risk free rate + (foreign > yield - foreign risk free rate) = domestic Rf + > foreign excess return > since Singapore Rf stays the same, whichever > country has the highest excess return is the best > one for full hedged return. > > For breakeven analysis, I just picked whichever > that has the smallest duration., based on yield = > delta(yield)/duration > > > s23dino Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Hey thanks, the consenous on the foreign > currency > > was Japan, Japan, UK? > > > > I still dont understand how Japan can have > highest > > hedged return UK had highest yield? Yea this sounds correct I just got so confused over the expected change in curreny rates and the cash rates in each country? I keet thinking that the differences in the cash rates is what the currency would depreciate by but then got confused since they showed expected depreciated. So does anyone know if it was Japan, Japan, UK for sure?