kochunni… in case you are interested: kochunni: 21 posts joey: 7,563 posts joey is your best friend on this board… don’t burn a bridge man!
So you believe; what we learn in these readings are not going to help us in making better investment decisions and outperform the market. I am just repeating what you said to the original post. JoeyDVivre Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > kochunni69 Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > That won’t justify your answer to the original > > post. > > > Say what? I have to justify giving an answer in > the context of my getting a charter? Who the heck > knows why I got a charter. I just did and it has > no bearing at all on how I feel about capital > markets or really much of anything. I did what I > did a lifetime ago for reasons that are obscure. > > > If the market is efficient anyway (which is > true > > to a great extend) why would somebody go for a > > charter learn the all kinds of techniques and > try > > to implement them in the investment decisions > they > > make? > > > > The original poster said “hey we are learning a > > lot of stuffs here and let’s see how we can put > > them in practice and measure our performance. > > If the market is going to be efficient anyway > > (just like you said), a professional investor > is > > never going to outperform the novice investor.
apcarlso Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > kochunni… in case you are interested: > > kochunni: 21 posts > joey: 7,563 posts > > joey is your best friend on this board… don’t > burn a bridge man! I knew exactly this is going to happen…somebody is going to quote the number of post he made. I may have just 21 posts so far, that doesn’t mean that I cannot disagree with a great man on the board and take the arrogance. I didn’t ask about his achievements or ask for arrogant replies. Since you sounds like agreeing with JoeyDVivre’s opinion and since you think the market is going to be efficient anyway (whether you have a charter or not) why are you pursuing a charter. According to JoeyDVivre, practicing what you learn in these readings doesn’t make sense. My question is very simple… if the charter holder cannot outperform the “efficient market”, why would you go for the charter… to post a zillion messages in a board?
kochunni - Obviously, my 7000 posts says that I think this is valuable. If the financial statement analysis you learned in CFA LI could help you outperform the market then the stat arb machines could wipe the floor with anybody. The stat arb machines can probe millions and millions of ratios in all kinds of dynamic ways better than all the CFA L I candidates combined and it’s not clear that stat arb produces any advantage. (There 's other stuff in LI even less likely to help you beat markets) Further, while I have enormous respect for these exams, at the end of the day it’s all fundamental stuff. Ask anyone about the coverage of the exams in their area of expertise and they will tell you that the CFA exams are an inch deep (and millions of miles wide which is why it takes up all your time studying). The CFA exams are nearly useless in helping you beat markets but you gotta walk before you can run and you need to learn this stuff to be able to participate in an intelligent discussion about markets. Honestly, how can you think that anything in the incredibly popular CFA curriculum would not have been arbed away eons before it reached the curriculum? I hope this is not too deflating but there is absolutely nothing in the CFA curriculum that is not known by hundreds of thousands of people who have more market influence than you do and would arb it away if it was of any use. So clearly not many of my 7000 posts were about beating markets so I must think there is some other value in this. BTW - I know plenty of people (well at least a few) who have made hundreds of mllions of dollars in capital markets living in huge mansions in CT who couldn’t pass LI if their lives depended on it.
The CFA curriculum is not going to allow you to make superior profits, I’m with Joey on that. I know this seems like alot of advanced material, but the CFA is more of a standard / starting point that tells fund managers you have solid aptitude. It is not a finish line. Even a CFA chartholder will be hard pressed to beat the S&P considering that alone you would be competing against the advanced resources, manpower, and accrued knowledge of top tier trading firms that dominate the market. While you will be trying your hand at analysing bonds using basic time value and CF methodology, traders with PHD’s in quant (such as Joey?) and connections with wallstreet industry analysts will be beating you at every turn using the mosaic method and advanced market models. There’s a reason the CFA materials preach on indexing and diversification approaching market covariance. I agree with Joey’s view on efficiency and I have no doubt that upon passing level II or III you will land the jobs you want and after a year on those jobs you will find yourself in agreeance.
And yes, I am aware I murdered the English language in that last post in regards to spelling and possibly grammer.
This website and competition look like fun, but I’m skeptical it’s of any value to the CFA Candidate. Is it going to help you learn the DuPont Equation for ROE, calculate a company’s sustainable growth rate? Tackle even a single LOS on exam day? If you win, will you credit victory to your newfound understanding of the Sharpe Ratio or the Security Market Line? You’ve got maybe a few months to compete, so why not take the most highly leveraged position you can possibly construct and either crush your competition or lose your shirt? Say it pays off and you win, is this the sort of portfolio you’d construct with real money on the line or a realistic time horizon? I doubt it. Have fun, but keep your eyes on the prize. I think this is a peripheral distraction. Time is a scarce commodity between now and June, can you afford this? Nonetheless, let’s start a side-bet on who’ll win the competition. Dinesh, my money’s on you, don’t let me down! I’ll split my winnings with you 
Dinesh, I expect to see a full disclosure of your addional compensation agreement with hiredguns1. As an addendum to what I said above, here’s a very simplified way to look at it, and its something I’ve used alot since taking Level I to explain the market to individuals who think they are going to gain exceptional returns with minimal additional risk / volatility: According to the CFA Level I literature there are two logical requirements to earn above market returns. 1) Your opinion / assesment must be different than that of the market, & 2) You must be right. Suggesting an ability to earn superior returns after preparing for the Level I exam is saying that you will be in position to outwit the bulge bracket firms. Not likely. The other point that was raised was that the CFA would be pointless if it didn’t improve your asset management abilities. For those people I suggest they need the CFA because they will learn among other things that according to semi-strong EMH (the most widely accepted stance) all public information is reflected in current stock prices. As the CFA materials cover public information, that makes the CFA clearly not a competitive advantage in terms of market returns. However, you may still do a better job at the office for having learned the material, which may in turn help your firm achieve superior returns as a whole.
Count me in: lily (dot) leung (at) gmail (dot) com
could be fun - count me in sofian_s@poczta.fm
Interesting discussion between Joey and the rest: The markets evolve over time. If you read The Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator (from the early part of the 20th century) or Beat the Dealer, it is striking how many opportunities were there to make a killing, and they all were fairly basic. For instance, no risk management practiced by Livingstone (whatever money he made, he just poured into the next bet). Today’s markets are saturated with capital and smart MBAs/PhDs, in effect making all developed markets very efficient. Emerging markets are increasingly efficient even though there are still opporunities to make a killing there. CFA curriculum material is effectively the price of entry into, as Joey put it very nicely, an intelligent discussion about markets. Investment games and my invidivual investing were invaluable to me because they illuminated the concepts of risk/return, alpha and the importance of creating a view of the market, placing a bet on it and sticking with it until you no longer believe in it (then you get out of the position, even at a loss) or until the play comes together. However, to understand this to a reasonable degree took some time and frankly, the returns I made were so meagre that they would not be worth the effort invested into them. One way to make this worthwhile is in the way it can help you get a very well paid job doing these things (in a more advanced form and using more advanced methods) for other people and with other people’s money. And why do the other people need to pay you well to do this for them, when it is not worthwhile for you? Because they have a *lot* of money to invest, and they *need* to avoid screwing it up, thus they need your expertise. Just my two cents.
Pls count me in too… aanabaratte(@)gmail(.)com
The new contest (it starts on Jan 3rd 2008 and runs till end of March 2008) has been set up and all the people who listed their email addresses on this thread have been included. If anyone who posted their email on this thread did not receive an email from me, pls update the post and I will include you. If anyone else wants to get added, pls update this thread with your email address and I will run a last round to include people on the 2nd of Jan. Cheers.