Just wondering… I would be onto other sites if I was a charterholder
I agree I’m quitting cold turkey if I pass on Tuesday
Charterholders themselves are the boardmembers and they moderate this forum - BChad, BS etc 
For the rest one word to describe timepass or passtime!!!
For most of us, our jobs involve just a segment of the material. Talking to other charterholders and dealing with questions from candidates helps keep us involved with parts of the material we may not deal with every day and therefore keeps our minds involved. Also, people develop virtual friendships or rivalries that continue past the exam and which it is useful to bounce ideas of the macroeconomy, politics, trading techniques, etc… Or just to learn how best to spend the megabux we all end up making - guaranteed - after we pass level 3. :-p
And we help people realize the realities of the industry
I can only speak for myself, but I like to kill some time on AF. I already know who’s an idiot and whose posts are worth reading. I also earned a lot of cool AF gear!
To help you pass the 3 exams, dude.
After being here for more than a year, I get a feeling that many of them are very kind to return the favor they received (explanations to the material, career advice, the industry’s cold hard facts, etc.) when they were candidates.
Guys like bchad, itera, and higgmond provide priceless advice and guidance. Sometimes they’re pretty funny too.
WSO and analystforum are my two favorite forums, and I’ll probably be checking in long after I’ve become a charterholder.
because there aren’t good alternatives, and to find humor in the suffering of others of course.
You sir, cannot (and should not) club these forums together. AFers are no match for 20 year old BSDs on WSO.
I just hang out here during office hours so that I look busy.
Good question.
For me its a mixture of wanting to stay connected to the cfa program in some way (none of my colleagues are charter holders and only a few of my friends are involved in the program) and not having anything better to do with my time… I should do something about that… Thanks OP!
I hung around a fair bit in the first year, but this is probably my first visit in over six months. Most of those who passed do hang around for a while though, usually to offer a little help to those who are going through what we have already lived through. I know I would have struggled a lot more without AF and I imagine many feel the same. It’s good to give something back.
I actually joined AF after i passed my exams (i didn’t know about this forum when i was going through it and in a way i’m kinda glad because i would otherwise freak out and come here all the time for support), i only came on because some of my friends were sitting for June 2013 and i wondered if things have changed since i did mine…
Anyway, i think it’s just another forum, it can be about baking, or mobile phones, or photography or anything… no one has all the answers and it’s good to come here to share ideas and opinions. Especially for the CFA program, you don’t study with other people usually and you can’t really keep in touch with anyone who went through the program, it’s nice to meet people who had the same experience!
NANA
i come for the JDV, JTLD and IHIHMath and stay for the BChad. Due to the lack of great characters recently, my interest in AF has diminished. That said, despite being less active in posting, i can’t help but check in a couple times a week. It’s like BChad said, you build a group of trusted virtual colleagues that you can bounce ideas off of and you stay so long as these colleagues are around. it’s like any social network. you use facebook like crazy in school, then you stop.
Joey and John Thain’s Limo Driver…those were the days. Remember the guy who kept posting about crushing natties and sending updates from the Street on his Blackberry? I can’t recall his name but he was very entertaining…
Does numi even hang around anymore?
yeah. numi pops in from time to time to give advice to the young 'uns. i think Daj was the nattie crusher if i remember correctly.
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word
lol no kidding. That place may be the biggest poser-douche enclave in the known universe.