Hey guys, I am beginning at the beginning with a little out of order on the FSA - I began with ethics, did quant, econ, then did corp finance and am now just getting deep into FSA. I know many of you started in a different order ,at the end or however else, and my question to those who have been through the other subjects is “how bad is it”? FSA looks pretty nasty and there are a handful of other dicey areas already - does it get a little better after FSA or does in continually get uglier from there?
there are some tricks here in FSA also like level 1. small difficulty you may face in derivative
What about Equity? Anyone know how it compares to FSA in difficulty. I’ll kicking Equity off next week and by flipping through some of the info, it does not look fun. Kinda worried since its weighted so heavily. Though I must add, I seriously dug into FSA and have it mostly mastered now. **My only exposure to 90+% of this was in undergrad finance courses and L1 materials so please assume no prior knowledge**
I have finished my first pass of the Schweser’s notes last month (and doing my second pass together with CFAI text questions now). In my case I found Fixed Income Investments and Portfolio Management the most challenging. Equity is long but it’s fair game. Alternate investment needs more passes but should be manageable. The rest are pretty reasonable to me. I recommend doing the CFAI text questions, as they are a lot more in-depth and not limited by the multiple choice format (they are short questions mostly). They also cover materials that are not included in the Schweser’s notes. Each SS has about 30-40 questions. If you can crunch through them, I believe you should have a better idea on what CFAI is expecting on the exam than reading Schweser’s notes alone. (And needless to say, Schweser’s notes is study notes and not the actual text, so do expect the CFAI text is more comprehensive.)
Equity is conceptually easy, most of the topics were covered in L1, and there is a lot of repetition (i.e. the valuation of a security today is the PV of expected future CF’s). Now that’s just getting through the material. Obviously, when it comes exam time, CFAI has a way of making seemingly easy topics friggin nastified.
I don’t disagree equity investment section has a bit of overlap with the L1 materials. What I found difficult about this section is the length and volume of details that it covers. Most of them are pretty straight forward (like topher mentioned, the PV of CF) and you see several themes play out in different context. The hard part I found is to remember the details (since the details is what differentiate the various valuation techniques) and filter out the excessive data in the questions.
So is it fair to say that after FSA the worst is over?
nope… sorry to disappoint you. you have far more hurdles ahead of you, esp. if you have no background in the material.
fsa was just for starters (an appetizer, if you will).
No IMHO FSA is most difficult part other SS related to equity, FI AI , PM and derivative should be easy because in these almost everything makes sense. You can understand. but same is not the case with FSA.
Well, if you look at the weightings of the topic, you would find out Equity weights more than FSA: http://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprog/courseofstudy/topicareaweights.html So I wouldn’t take either Equity or FSA too lightly. But if I have extra time, I would definitely spend it on Equity because it is longer and it has a higher chance to appear on the exam. I found FSA materials annoying but manageable. It’s true a lot of things don’t need to make sense (well it’s how the standard was established right now and in some cases, you need to memorize two standards for the same thing due to a recent standard change).