Poll - what subject would you pick up as most important/least important?

CFA Level III
#1

Hi, If you had to pick up 3 subjects which are safer to skip and 3 subjects which you never would skip in any case in Level 3 what will be your choice? I write down subjects for your convenience (in case if you got lazy to memorize different names of subjects at Level 3) Fixed-Income Portfolio Management Equity Portfolio Management Alternative Investments for Portfolio Management Risk Management Risk Management Applications of Derivatives Behavioral Finance Private Wealth Management Portfolio Management for Institutional Investors Applications of Economic Analysis to Portfolio Management Asset Allocation and Related Decisions in Portfolio Management Trading Performance Evaluation and Global Investment Performance Standards Ethical and Professional Standards The Asset Management Industry and Professionalism

#2

Bit ironic to assume we’re lazy and you’re the one wondering which topics to punt lol.

Hate to be that guy but you really shouldn’t skip anything at L3. Literally looking at that list there’s nothing I would skip, The best approach is to assume everything is equally testable because they’re so intertwined. Sorry for the unsatisfying response.

#3

FI is 15-20%

Equity is 10-15%

PM is 35-40% (although it includes a lot of ~5% increments)

Rest are mostly 5-10% You can’t underweight anything without risking getting eff’ed in the a on exam day. You might think performance eval is easy and skippable, and then get stuck with a 7 point AM question on implementation shortfall. Or you might spend weeks trying to understand inter-market carry trade with FX hedging, and not get tested at all.

#4

as a retaker: general thoughts on punting entire topics at L3 is dont do it. too risky. a big juicy 9 point question, on anything, is always a possibility.

i would say the least puntable material is basically the entirety of Book 2/5 in the schweser notes. the PWM/Inst book. its like 40% of the exam when you think about it.

risk mgmt/derivs i woulnt punt either. too much low hanging fruit and so ubiquitous on the PM part. plug and chug. even swaps you can get into a rhythm.

i think ALTERNATIVES is the only thing i would be comfortable punting. for me, im only pnting specific things within topics, not topics themselves. im currently punting

  1. collar calculations. all kinds of collars. but i know the underlying motivations, etc

  2. box spread. thats just not gonna show up

  3. IR swaption calcs

4 Bond Math (aka, what will a 5% bond yield in one year when its a blah blah, when the forward and spot rates are blah blah etc)

#5

box spread could come up if they really hate us. It’s specific in the learning objectives.

#6

Whatever you do, don’t punt the iron condor.