If you have extra capacity and you have a few hundred dollars to spare (you don’t need to get in debt to register for the CFA exam), i’d say go for it.
The truth is, sometimes we just need to occupy our time with something productive, and you may or may not make better use of your time when you are not studying! many people who work a regular 9-5 job and are not studying claim to have no time at all!
but of course, if you already have some ideas on what to do next or you want to try out a different field, i’d say go try something else and perhaps you will come back for L2 in a couple years.
Instead of finding a job or going out to work and gain valuable experience, you will be spending time at HOME studying ALONE.
The WORST thing to do in terms of job hunting is staying at home and just apply to jobs online. That’s the most passive way of find a job and the success rate is low.
If i were in your situation, i get my ass out and find anything to do and expand my network. SO WHAT if you get a blue collar job? SO WHAT if you get a part time job in an office doing filing?? SO WHAT if you volunteer for a non-profit doing book keeping???
You are honestly better off proving yourself you are a capable person by working whatever job you can find (again, you are in no position to be picky when you are a NINJA!), then passing all 3 CFA exams right now.
The thing is ETFs have a lot of shortcomings, but they got a lot of extra mileage because even some seasoned professionals tend to think that ETFs and indexes are the same thing. Just play around on etfdb.com and you can see how hard of a time ETFs have following whatever index they try to emulate. Sometimes large ETFs miss the benchmark (or each other) in a year by several hundred bps.
I’m not really advocating active management, but isn’t a clear decision as many make out to be. When we compare practical, investable stuff, one can see active managers as basically extra risk - extra risk of screwing up with a possible upside “risk” of beating the market.
Nana, the point isn’t to “prove yourself a capable person”, whatever that means. The point is to get a job that allows you to use your undergrad degree and invest your time in something that actually has a future instead of a dead-end job. Most dead-end jobs (if not all of them) are time sucks and energy sucks. The most valuable resource a person has is their time. They have every right to be “picky”, and should be picky. Unless you’ve actually worked in a shit job, you have absolutely no idea how draining phyiscally and mentally they can be. Millions of “working poor” Americans think that they can get ahead because they’re working multiple shit jobs that will barely pay their rent and allow them such luxuries like gas for their car or a visit to the dentist. The average time the working poor in the US takes to graduate a 4 year program is 7-8 (and the graduation rates are dismal). It’s astounding to see the unbelievable arrogance to tell somebody else - a person you don’t even know, whose country you’re very likely not even familiar with - to stop studying and improving themselves. Do you have ANYfucking clue what the job market for graduates is like in Poland, or any country that’s still deemed an emerging market? Have you ever even set foot in the country and talked to average people outside of airport Starbucks?
Most investors don’t really have that much alternative to owning an ETF or mutual fund. Both charge fees. Both have tracking error, and MFs can have tax burdens at unpredictable times unless you are in a tax-free account like a ROTH. The fact that ETFs and MFs underperform the index by a fee and some tracking error is largely irrelevant to investors who don’t have the account size to go head and actually own every company in the index (and in the right proportions, and rebalance when the index changes).
Sure, they underperform the index, by a bit, but that’s better than most active managers do.
Also, you have to consider additional volatility. I would rather do an ETF vs even a manager that does slightly better, but doing it by adding a lot more vol/risk to the portfolio
Well, if you are looking for a job, i think you must prove to your employer that you are a capable person, that IS the point!
ca·pa·ble
/ˈkāpəbəl/ Adjective
Having the ability, fitness, or quality necessary to do or achieve a specified thing.
Able to achieve efficiently whatever one has to do; competent.
Whether you work to gain work experience or study to get extra letters behind your name - YOU ARE PRACTICALLY TRYING TO DO THE SAME THING!
I am not familiar with your country, but guess what, if you think a CFA is the golden ticket in Poland, and that is the determinant of saving you from working in Starbucks, go for it! And better yet, report back! Because there are thousands CFA candidates and charterholders in the world looking for jobs. Apparently, according to you, Poland is the country where all the CFA jobs are located and if you get a CFA you will automatically placed in a high paying job out of poverty. I will be very interested to know your story! Perhaps some of us want to move to Poland too!
I probably fall into the 80%, I have a strange story. I have a Bsc (Bio) and rather than go the PHD route decided to get into finance so I wrote the GMAT right after I graduated and got into a Mid-Level MBA program. I graduated a year ago and have a good job in the public service that is accouting/capital budgeting related but is pretty far from what the CFA program is geared towards.
The value I am getting right now from the CFA is that it is filling in the gaps of my finance knowledge not having a finance undergrad. What I have learned from the program has helped me immensley in performing my current job the success I am having in it displays my work ethic and commitment to finance to my employer and it has opened up opportunities for me despite the fact that I do not work in investing.
I plan to try to get into asset management/capital markets very soon while I am still young (26). I believe that having enrolled in the CFA program will show employers that despite not working directly in those fields I have shown a commitment to pursuing those areas of work through participating in the CFA program. I also believe that at least academically it levels the playing field a bit (not completley by any means) when competing with candidates that may have gone to a better school or have a a little more work experience. Lastly, if I do crack into asset management/capital markets the CFA designation will be an excellent asset.
Although I am not an ideal candidate to be pursuing the CFA and the designation is not the golden ticket my finance professors lead me to believe it would be, it is paying small dividends now with potential for great dividends in the future so it was worth 7 months of my time to get L1/L2. Plus my employer is paying for it.
Listen you condescending little turd, unless you’re actually familiar with the finance job market in a questioner’s country, don’t bother giving them advice. Emerging markets are called “emerging” for a reason. Maybe you should have looked that up in the dictionary instead.
^ If you believe in reincarnation perhaps. Most of us dont.
It’s a huge sacrifice. Ideally, you wanna be focusing on your career. If you are a spoogemoppingwalla than your opportunity costs are low. But i’d be more focused on getting a promotion to toiletwashingwalla than working on the CFA.
You’re also making a big assumption that it will take you 18 months. Not the case for most of us.
I think pound for pound a Top MBA is a way better premise for most people. You get the same knowledge (but in a much healthier dilluted doese), you have way better opportunities to find new employment, you get a much larger pay increase, and you get a much better network. The only problem is getting into one and paying for it. CFA has virtually no barriers to entry and is cheap. In 10 years I think it will be viewed as the poor mans MBA.
It is a huge sacrifice for me. I started this “thing” when my daughter was 6 months old. Now she is 3.5 years old and i have yet to complete this " thing" lost so much of her early days. the joy of watching her grow. I did find time whenever i could but had to completely forget i had a family in the final months and to add to it failed twice.
Work , Study, family. thats all my life has been since i took up this “thing”
glossary: - Thing :- a non living being not to be confused with any professional program.
Reincarnation for me will be after i pass this “thing”
Nothing is a goldern ticket to riches unless you plan on marrying a rich old dude who’s going to die and leave you all his money. The CFA isn’t a ticket to riches, but it’s not a ticket to poverty either. It depends a lot on what you to do and where you’re coming from. If you’re facing an obvious choice like go to a top business school or stay at your current job and get the CFA, the top business school is the smart decision. I don’t know if the CFA will ever be considered the “poor man’s MBA”. As a rule, any graduates that aren’t from top ranked business schools are considered a joke by most top firms. Same deal goes with law school.
With absolute certainty, it IS a waste of time and money to go to an MBA program that’s not in the top 20 rank. The CFA may not be a waste of time, if you have reasonable expectations. If you think that getting the CFA will get Warren Buffett or Tim Cook will hire you to manage their portfolio, that’s unrealistic. Instead of lamenting how useless the CFA is, a better thing to do would be to develop more realistic expectations that apply to your particular situation. There is no one answer that works for everybody.
Perhaps some of us want to move to Poland too!