I wish CFA had more quant…i think it is a little under represented in the whole scheme of things.
sharpy606 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > FRA, fixed AND dervs. +1 Equity is easy plug and chug, same with corp fin., PM can be real easy unless it’s TB, Ethics is what it is, Quant is such a small part it doesn’t really matter if you know it or not, but it’s pretty tough
Alternatives is pretty tough as Bilal said. It’s quite a lot of material for just 5% of the exam and it could cover anything from PE, VC, Commodities, HF, or RE. It really is a crap shoot.
I agree with prophets, Ethics is quite subjective. It looks like common sense but many times it’s not. Besides that Ethic is a little difficult to study for, I would say the hardest part on L2 is currency swap on derivatives and commodities on alternative inv. It’s probably b/c I used schweser notes and it briefly covers those two areas.
The difficult part is just the boring part. For me it is Alternative Investments esp Mortgage /SMM …
Hardest is Econ/Ethics/Derivatives. Some of the FRA stuff can also be made really hard if they like. Easiest is probably Quant, then Equity and FI.
I did not get a single word out of the whole alternative investment problem we had on the exam. It was jkdjaskldjklajdksaluiowepiqopeijdkslajkdl to me 
… I just used my 6th sense which I definitely don’t have lol… guess what? Straight <50 on this section. Derivatives is very tricky … solve as many problems as you and READ the vignette more than once before getting into solving the problems. I believe that people who say they aced the exam are the ones who get frustrated when the results come out but when people say: I have no clue how it went then they have a chance to pass … i guess
derivs is about knowing the formulas. if you get them down packed, it’s really not hard. Ethics was hard, because you can memorize everything, incl. the practice q’s, and it’ll still seem really weird on test day
Most difficult for me this year: everything except FRA, ethics and equity. Band 7.
Does anyone think Quants is a bit under reperesented in the L2 exam? It is finance after all…dont portfolio/investment analysts use spreadsheets/statistical software to conduct time series analysis/estimate risk premia/ etc?
Chuckrox8 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Alternatives is pretty tough as Bilal said. It’s > quite a lot of material for just 5% of the exam > and it could cover anything from PE, VC, > Commodities, HF, or RE. It really is a crap > shoot. +1 When I saw that vignette on hedge funds, I prayed god to let him make intelligent guesses for me. Failed again in Alt Inv (in L1 too). FRA & Derivatives saved me. Literally, so much to ask from the Alt Inv for so little weightage.
I was quite bummed about VC not coming up in the exam since it was so mechanical…I skipped Hedge Fund readings as I found it borrowing and difficult to memorise… and lo and behold an entire vignette comes up in the exam…Can only thank Lady Luck for being by my side that day…dosn’t happen as often as I need her to be .