Toughest part of L2

I’m almost done reading Quant - Time series and I can say that there is a substantial difference between L1 and L2. Unfortunately it seem that L2 is much more challeging to say the least. I’m wondering what part of L2 is considered the most difficult? I’m hoping that someone would say Quant :slight_smile:

tolic - i just finished quant and thought it was horrible. i’ve gone through FSA and Equities already and thought quant was much harder to wrap my head around. but then again i’ve never seen multiple regressions or time series before (in school, at work, etc) so maybe it’ll come to us after some time. My fear is that Port Management (which I have yet to cover) is still lurking out there. I talked to Bob Stalla at a CFA luncheon this week, and he said he personally wrote the study guide for LII port mangement because it was so challenging. He basically scared the **** out of me, describing PM as “the hardest study sesssion I’ve seen at any level in all my years.” Hope that’s uplifting!

Interesting comments! I’ve spent about 35 hours on quant (mostly TS) and have a math tutor. Multiple regression is rather easy but time series is a whole other matter. These are our basic tools for analysis and important to me - with a good teacher, I learned to appreciate the beauty of TS. ForEx in Econ was challenging and a time sink (Schweser notes were excellent in this area). Since we work in a global economy, it was critical to understand this area. Finance and FSA seemed relatively easy. Fixed Income - took some time to work through but it was particularly interesting in light of the subprime meltdown. That’s all I’ve done so far. Hope this helps - I’m looking forward to PM!

i’m thinking of getting a “JDV is my coplilot” or “WWJDVD?” bumper sticker or t-shirt. who needs a tutor when we have a resident quant legend here?

Well, Quant was certainly challenging - time series in particular. I also found SS7 somewhat difficult - the concepts are ok (I’ve heard SS7 is hard so I paid more attention), but the study materials were not quite perfect. Out of the 196 or so questions that Schweser has for SS7 only about 20 are pension-related. The rest are all international subsidiary stuff. As a result I know the international part pretty well, but had almost no practice for pensions…

Oops, I must be talking about SS6 above. Wow…

Derivatives were pretty difficult. Just finished reviewing the CFA notes on this. I’m curious to see how Schwesser treats these but the conceptual aspects especially for pricing interest rate swaps and put call parity for options on forward contracts I found rather hard to grasp.

All of you who are talking about which subjects you have already covered: - you probably passed level I in Dec. 2006 and failed LII in June 2007 or passed LI in June 2007, right? - when did you start your readings for Level II next June? Because I am currently waiting for my LI results (only 2 days left…) and wonder whether I could be able to devote the 250 hours I spread over 10 months for LI from now till June 2008. Thanks

I’m taking L2 for the first time in June. Passed L1 last June. A good friend of mine who is a very smart guy and put a lot of time in failed L2 last year which made me overly cautious. So I decided to read both the CFA texts then the Schwesser texts. It’s a lot of work but given the difficulty of the exam I thought it necessary to really master the material. I will finish the CFA texts this week (started at the end of September) and will be starting with the Schwesser material next week (trying to do 2 study sessions a week). If you haven’t started yet, I’d probably recommend reading the 2 sets (CFAI and Schwesser side by side) instead of doing them sequentially like I have. Just my suggestion as it is supposed to be a very difficult exam and the pass rates are generally low.

I have read the quant section in 2007 schewser notes and don’t find it particularly difficult Maybe 2008 has harder new materials such as Time Series?

Overall I would say Quant so far … and PM is out to there … With that said, the biggest challenge I face is retaining this stuff and spitting out the little details come test day.

Does anyone have an idea if the L2 exams are going to be “concept-centric” like the L1 was or more calculator friendly?

nann_82 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Does anyone have an idea if the L2 exams are going > to be “concept-centric” like the L1 was or more > calculator friendly? as a repeater I can say with some certainty that it will be even less calculator friendly than L1

the 2007 quant section was very easy. it didn’t have time series though…

one possibly stupid question…we get different curriculum books for L1/2/3 ? How many pages are these books ? 400-500 each ?

Thanks joeisenb, No that I have my results for level I (pass) I feel more confident for Level II. I don’t really know whether it is harder than level I but I found level I rather easy compared to what it could be. Anyway, I’ll work very seriously just like for LI.

So far I have found Level 2 stuff to be very fair. TS is no cake walk, but can be conquered with enough committment.