I find myself struggling with these two sections the most, only averaging about 70% on them for the practice exams. I think it is because these are the first two books I read which is very long ago. I will be reading the Secret Sauce a week before the exam, and the only practice exam I have left is the CFAI one.
Any tips? I really want to feel more comfortable than I currently do on these
Print out all the LOS for each of these sections and go over them. I found doing this to be better than reading Secret Sauce, but thats just my opinion.
QM is worth drilling over and over. Econ, however, is a black hole. It’s roughly 20% of the total readings but only appears in the form of 24 questions (10%) on the exam. That’s not cool.
I second cgottuso. Make sure you know QM as it will also help you in a few other sections. Practice is key at this point. I would suggest you forget about secret sauce (or 11th hour for that matter) and solve a lot of questions. Redo the EOC questions. Econs is tough for most people so don’t feel too bad if you can’t seem to get it in. Again, redo EOC qns and try to get at least half of the econs qns correct.
Some of the sections I predict that will show up on the exam based on what I have seen on the mocks I have taken - Firm structures(perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, monopoly), profit maximization, currencies (memorize all the formulas and the regimes), aggregate demand/aggregate supply(know what drives shifts in these curves), price floors, price ceilings, subsidies, incidence of taxes, GDP formulas, the relationship with C+S+T=C+I+G+(X-M), current account/capital accounts.
I don’t think they are going to test something as difficult as IM/LM curves to be honest, if you have extra time I would study them, otherwise just skip.
The quant material is just practice and probably good value-for-money in terms of time.
As for economics, I’m an economist so take this with a grain of salt, but basically just think through the problem nice and slowly. There is a bunch of material in there that I’ve completely forgotten from years ago but just work through the problem and don’t get thrown off by the terms used… that’s half the problem. For eg (and a basic example), if the question asks about whether a central bank would buy or sell securities to loosen monetary policy, run through what actually happens (rather than memorising anything). If a CB sells securities, it takes in money. if it’s holding the money, the banks aren’t. If it buys securities, it’s giving the banks the money, which increases the money supply and the banks can go out and lend if the demand is there, loosening monetary conditions.
That may not be much help but reallly, jargon aside, just draw some diagrams and think about what makes the most sense… you may be surprised. Hopefully that’s better than guessing.
whatever is “new” in econ over last years’ material will most likely be on the exam