It is interesting to know what you think… Level 2 includes 20%-30% equity. nobody said it is difficult. most pp said FSA and Derivative. I am from auditing background and in investment industry now. Ethics is not a problem and it become to an English reading comprehensive for me. Quant is very close to advanced maths in university when i was doing accouting. I feel FSA is not easy and it could be much harder if CFA institution want it harder. dont know how others manage it. what do you think?
- I guess it all depends on your background: if you did audit than I think FSA shouldn 't be a problem for you. - Equity is easy in the books, but I got raped during the exam. I believe they made a point of making very tough equity questions. - Portfolio management I think is pretty hard.
Coming from a repeating candidate everything is doable if you put in the time. Just make sure you take equity very seriously. It is probably the most difficult bit ticket topic.
i think i probably spent at least 40% of my time on FSA. found it hardest by far… time series analysis took alot of time later on… good thing is that harder the subject, i found the easier the questions and vice-versa. almost everyone i saw got over 70 on FSA. and of course, if you didn’t, you were probably near-toast. FSA was the only thing i found hard… that compensation chapter is ridiculous. i finally just gave up on it in a detailed sense.
FSA was the most challenging for me.
i thought the FSA section was tedious in the text but on the exam they tested you with the easiest questions. i took the exam twice and both exams had the most basic adjustments/translation/pension questions. derivatives has the potential to be very challenging
Slash Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i thought the FSA section was tedious in the text > but on the exam they tested you with the easiest > questions. i took the exam twice and both exams > had the most basic adjustments/translation/pension > questions. I agree. The actual exam questions were easier.
fixed income sucked for me. not while i was reading/reviewing the material but on the actual test. i didn’t worry enough about the topic and i bombed it. i didn’t think fsa was that bad. same with equity. but i studied these topics inside and out. i think people get intimidated by derivatives (i was the same way after my first read through swaps), but after some practice it turned into a strength for me, as did quant… but i’m not sure how i would have fared had there been time series on that test.
if you don’t get schweser, i would get someone’s schweser derivatives and photo-copy… parts of the cfa text in this section are very hard to follow in cfa readings… everything else i think is ok to do with cfa text. just so much easier with schweser.
Yeah, I read both book and notes. I know what you mean. Books are trying to every story and notes are more tidy. Since we have lots of time now, i read book first and if i dont get it. i go to notes. I am trying to put notes in the last three months. Understanding the logic behind it is working for me. Many pp told me they did lots of practices and exercises. I am new in investment industry -21 months so far. I come to this program to learn and to use in my job (investment involved) I found that FSA is very different from what I learned in University. I have studied 4 years bacholer in accounting and 1.5 year master for accounting, plus over 3 years auditing. The way written in CFA is not for beginner in accouting for sure, I have to say. I can see that lots of auditing procedures from an- ex auditor prospect view. For example, how to detect earning quality. Degree of difficulty is less than CPA.
True that. For example, I thought the FSA part in the CFA books was written in such an illogical structure. Schweser did it so much better.
IMO, Study session 6 (Pensions & Multinational operations) and 17 (Options and Swaps) are challenging for many depending upon their educational background. Expect atleast 3 item sets (15%) on these 2 study sessions with a possibility combining derivatives with fixed income.
which part of portfolio management is difficult?
lily1229 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > which part of portfolio management is difficult? all of it, how the questions asked in the exam seem never to relate to the material that you thinking something different to what the CFAI wanted you to think. its a tough exams with some very demanding areas. i think you’ll find ethics pretty hard as well. do not under-estimate the difficulty of this exam
thanks. the level 1 ethics is not very hard. i have to be very careful with the level 2. I have not done any exercises of the level 2 portfolio management.
It really depends on your background. Equity, PM, FI, Derivatives… To me those were the hardest. However, I wouldn’t bother figuring out which section is harder and which one is most likely to come up. The exam doesn’t work that way and you will get burned if you don’t master everything.
Quant, PM, FI, Der
What is the best way to test one’s knowledge in the hardest areas? I was hoping that there is some material that tests the areas in a similar fashion (itemsets) compared to the actual exams. Apart from the sample tests / mock tests, which are the tests that are closest in comparison to the real thing