I just did Qbank questions after every chapter I studied…Used it as more of a review and test to see if I understood the concepts…If I didnt understand I would mark the chapter and revisit after I go through the material. Sometimes its better to revisit with a fresh head…It will be easier to udnerstand the second or third time around.
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First of all congratulation… Great article… i am a fresher and i am looking for CFA level 1 in December 2010… I am a engineering graduate… so which study material will u suggest for me??.. i started with Micro economies… Regards, Rahul
I love the notecards idea. Did you create your own cards? Also, would you kindly share them? Thanks man, very helpful and informative thread.
@all Am planning L1 this Dec, just got started with browsing the cfai material. thanks for all the good advice
Quasar - I did create my own. I think its best you create them yourself because as you create them you are learning the material. Dont use someone else’s notecards thats not a good way to study.
Hopefully this well help anyone who is taking DEC 2010.
ManVsCFA thanks for the advice, it is much appreciated. as far as schweser test prep goes, did you find the questions on level I were structured similarly to that of the qbank, ie wording, etc. Im feeling pretty confident for the dec Level I but Ive heard mixed opinions about the qbank/schweser and how their tests can be ‘way’ different than the actual exams. Just wondering what your opinion was on this. thanks dude.
Horse Girl Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ManvsCFA - THANK YOU for your post! Your > timing is perfect since I found myself skipping > sections that seem confusing (i.e. the Dupont > Analysis of decomposing ROE) thinking I’ll come > back to it later. I’m going to go back to > Dupont tonight and master that concept!! Funny you say this because when I was studying for L1 I had exactly the same problem with DuPont…sort of skipped it and ended up studying it in the last week before the exam (and thank god I did because of course I showed up BIG TIME). Here’s how I remember it: ROE can be decomposed in 5 ratios, right? Well, just think about the income statement and start from the bottom up and work you way up. Remember that the income statement gives you a number of “revenue” measures starting from Revenue, to EBIT, to EBT, to finally NI. So you start at the bottom with NI - the next sub-level up from there is EBT, so it’s: NI/EBT Then you take EBT and work one level up to EBIT, so it’s: EBT/EBIT From EBIT you go one level up to Revenue to get: EBIT/Revenue Then you just have to remember financial leverage as assets/equity and asset turnover as revenue/assets. If you have the 5-part decomposition of ROE you can derive every other “form” of DuPont by simply canceling out numerators and denominators.
Baystreet, keep in mind that qbank is only good to test your knowledge on the subject…I always found them helpful for that but as far as being close to what exam questions are like, for some reason they are a little different/or at least feel that way during the exam. The more questions you do the better, it makes no difference if it is like the exam or not…again it is to test your knowledge so you can find out where your weaknesses are.
Thanks for all the great posts ManVsCFA. I just wrote this message in a new thread but I figured I would direct it towards you since you seem knowledgeable in the study material; “I am having trouble with reading number 6 in Book 1 (Discount Cash Flow Application). I do not have a degree in finance so some of this material is relatively new to me. (Masters in Economics - have taken some finance courses). I have read the reading and used the Schweser Video Lectures and I feel that they show you two different ways of calculating the problems in these sections (using calculator vs doing problems by hand). Is it recommended that I am able to do the time value equations and the discount cash flow equations by hand or should I just understand how to be able to derive the answers by calculator? Any tips or additional readings for solving for MWR and TWR? I feel that in the CFAI book the latter examples seem fairly difficult and time consuming and there are only a few practice problems and they are no where nearly as long or complicated. The Quant section is very discouraging. I am hoping that I am able to make up time in the following economic section.” Any suggestions? -Jason
jwiszyns, I would highly recommend that you know how to do the calculations by hand because once you get to the exam, what if your calculator breaks? or what if they ask you a conceptual question that makes your calculator useless? Make sure you know it cold!! The MWR & TWR questions on the test were pretty straight forward if I remember correctly. Just understand the differences between them and why you could have better performance with one over the other etc… Again know them conceptually more than the calculation. For Quant I would just come back to it later…Its always easier to review a second or third time than the 1st. There were times I got so fustrated because I could not understand a topic for the life of me…But after studying other material for some time and coming back to it I was always able to figure it out…read, re-read and read again.
Good luck to all lvl 1ers