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This should do the trick.
But seriously, I think youre gonna be fine.
I started out in HY. This is a good list.
I’ll add that your main focus is liquidity. Can the company service its debt? Make payroll? What’s their cash burn rate?
I’ll second learning about covenants and capital structure (secured, unsecured, preferred) and which entity the debt sits at. Focus on how close the company is to violating their covenants. What happens if they trip a covenant? How much of their asset base is pledged as collateral? If a company files for BK, how much can you recover?
Know their leverage ratio. Know what their EBITDA looks like on a rolling basis. Did they have a monster 4Q18, which gave them a ton of room? If so, when will their EBITDA fall off?
If you have time, read this book. The legal info is probably stale, but the analysis sections are still good.
If you're making a career in finance, as opposed to in Tech, then Python and Excel are both great ways to go. Per SteamPunkMoonz's excellent comment, Python actually could be better.
If you do go the VBA route, this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Excel-2013-Power-Programming-VBA/dp/1118490398
If you go the Python route... then I highly recommend that you: 1) Download Anaconda (https://www.anaconda.com/) 2) Learn how to use Jupyter Notebook (comes with Anaconda) 3) Use Jupyter to learn how to use Pandas (also comes with Anaconda)
If you need more details, just ask... happy to help!
I have. Received extra time, the use of a scribe, and a private room for level 1 last June.
I had my neurologist fill out the forms and perform the evaluation. I'm not sure if having a specialist helped my case. I made sure it was very thorough and I suggest finding metrics that can support your accommodation requests (E.g. "Using a pen and paper, the patient was able to transcribe Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor for twelve minutes and thirteen seconds before experiencing discomfort in x, y and z areas." Then attach a copy of whatever you wrote). You may also want to explain why you need accommodations for level 3 and didn't for levels 1 & 2. Yes, it's obvious to you and I but don't expect everyone to get it.
I've basically spent my entire life dealing with shit like this. I was going to respond to you via PM but I realized I had the same questions last Spring and, like you, couldn't find much online. Hopefully this helps and gives hope to you and others looking for more information.
Edit: If you feel more comfortable talking in private, feel free to PM.
Super important.. you are expected to know how to use the calculator in the exam, and every.minute.counts while taking the exam and you'd want to be able to use it quickly.
If money is tight at the moment, save up and use an "app" calculator (TI BA II Plus - free btw/link below) until you can buy one (i'd recommend buying the calculator asap though).
Android App Link (i hope you have android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cfa.calculator
So far I have finished: Black Swan-Taleb*, The Undoing Project-Michael Lewis (on Kahnemann and Tversky), From Darwin to Munger-Bevelin, Road to Serfdom-Hayek, and Zero to One-Thiel. Favorites are the first three.
Currently reading: Margin of Safety-Klarman
Books on deck: Barbarians at the gate, The essays of Warren Buffett, Crossing the chasm: marketing and selling disruptive products to mainstream consumers, Dhando Investor, The Misbehaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, and lastly the final three Taleb books (Antifragile, The bed of Procrustes, and Fooled by Randomness).
I have a few other more political and psychology books that are not really finance related. But hopefully some of those titles can help you find something.
I guess you can buy this?
But it is kinda steep. For that price you can probably buy an older generation ipad or samsung tablet and just run Vitasource bookshelf (the delivery method you receive the curriculum)
Or, is the CFA app still around?
The work around is to print at PDF, and then open on your kindle like khruschev already suggested. I don't know how the kindle would render it.
I would experiment with your L1 materials and see how it looks.
As far as getting the kindle version from amazon,
I'm budgeting 6.5 months for Level 2. Experts seem to support Dr. Meldrum's view. Rachel Bryant said (page 85) 500 hours of (focused) study are needed to pass Level 2.
Convexity is found by taking the second derivative of the bond equation.
Duration is the process of linearization, and convexity is the error term.
If you recall from calculus the derivative is tangent - measures an instantaneous rate of change. That's what you're doing with duration.
However, just like taking a tangent on any other curve, that rate of change is only accurate for a small amount. There is a method in numerical analysis that uses the second derivative to find the error that comes out once you move past a certain point on the curve.
Convexity is that error term.
There is basic explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_convexity
There is another book to consider: https://www.amazon.ca/Mathematics-Financial-Modeling-Investment-Management/dp/0471465992
I would recommend BIWS for someone without direct experience that has an Excel modelling test in a week.
If you're trying to generally get better at your Excel / modelling skills then I'd recommend this book off Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Modeling-Structured-Finance-Flows-Microsoft%C3%82-Excel/dp/0470042907
I'm practicing for December using 2018 Schweser from June candidates, buying on Amazon. You can find it from unofficial source online. or Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/2018-CFA-Level-Kaplan-Schweser/dp/B078MLVZQR/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529813640&sr=1-6&keywords=2018+cfa+level+1. DM me for more info. But basically it's not the time, it's the effort you put in.
Def take the free practice exam on the FINRA website.
I used the Kaplan book ($45) then bought a practice exam book off amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733591125/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_evucDb70Q99YY)
It’s so easy compared to the CFA L1 but there’s some material that is covered in the SIE that isn’t covered in the CFA curriculum. You’ll only need to study for like a week, two weeks max.
You can buy them online (eg. Amazon etc). In the following link you can see it's approximately 50 bucks cheaper for Wiley's:
You can also purchase summaries :
Hedge Fund Market Wizards is pretty good. The older Market Wizard books are fun reads as well.
I've read 50 or 60 great Finance books and only remember a handful of them. A re-read of Thinking Fast and Slow and a 1st reading of the Tidying up book would be worthwhile for me.
Other than that, it would be 10-Ks or financial publications/whitepapers and related. Or "What Color is Your Parachute" to help with a job transition.
Principles by Ray Dalio is also on my short list.
Agree with people who say: i) just learn the material itself -- L1 is designed to help you bridge from non-finance background; ii) start with FRA. FRA is so critical, and like learning another language. It's a complete system of movements of cash and pretend-cash (accruals, etc.). Helps a lot to "speak FRA" as far as CFA delves into it vs just learning discrete FRA questions.
As far as material outside the curriculum goes, I have been most inspired by learning about Warren Buffett. The Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville captivated me in undergrad. Beyond that, reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is like going back to the roots of what security analysis means. A more modern spin might be The Warren Buffett Way. Graham and Buffett were/are value investors -- they crave "ugly" and "out of fashion" companies while everyone else is fixated on Tesla and Apple.
But while these books will help you shift to an investment mindset, at most they might help with 1 question. Passing the exams is best viewed as a self-contained process -- experts in finance can fail without proper study; people with no background can excel with effort and focus.
I typically follow the Amazon review trail. A few:
Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational was good and easier to read than Kahneman, but I don't remember any key themes. I'd probably read that and Dan's other books.
I like Nassim Taleb a lot, but it's been a while since I've read Fooled By Randomness.
Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance is a big name behavioral finance texts. I tried to read it in college didn't grasp his concepts at the time... I need to revisit.
A fun one (Typically Free on Kindle) is Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds. The first 100-120 pages goes through (I believe) The South Sea bubble and Tulip Mania in depth. A Random Walk Down Wall Street also mentions them, along with the other market fallacies.
And I can't forget The Behavior Gap by Carl Richards. It's an easy and fun read, with great ways to think about money. It is more personal finance focused than any study of behavior, though.
Lastly, many people like Malcolm Gladwell's books, but I'm not a fan of his writing style.
This might point you in the right direction. I still think Kahneman is #1 and will re-read soon.
I read a book recently called "The Power of Habit." The author describes how a lot of things we do are automatic and that when we get in to the groove of them, we don't need to motivate ourselves to change our behaviors anymore. It just becomes routine. It takes a few weeks of making the conscious choice of a certain behavior, but if you have the will power to for instance set aside that specific time every day, and to study hard during it, for 3 weeks or so, then it will be exponentially easier to continue on after that. Here's a flow chart : )
http://duhigg-site.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/How-to-Change-a-Habit.jpg
I use an app called Smartphone Addiction Timer (Android) and lock myself out of my phone for 45 minutes at a time. Then I take a 15 minute break.
I make sure I'm well fed but not overfull. A small amount of caffeine helps me, but not too much (I get sick). I have big noise blocking headphones (Sennheiser HD-280S) and I listen to ambient music (I used mostly classical for level 1 but find this stuff is better).
Only the link that I provided in my text post and then google / stackoverflow which is just Yahoo Answers for programming questions. I learned all the basics from the link (people refer to that book at LPTHW or Learn Python The Hard Way) and then filled in little details of whatever project I was working on by googling.
Amazon is your friend.
The calculation in their errata is wrong.
Color me surprised.
You should submit an erratum on the erratum. You can do so here.
Let CFA Institute know about it so that they can add it to the errata; here's their form.
You can search "schweser note cfa l1" in Google.
But anyways. Welcome to 2022.
Let CFA Institute know here.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to them, alas.
If this question is in the CFA Institute materials, let them know of the error here.
Its not unavailable, it is just more expensive.
​
A must read book that sums up things quite nicely:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Best-Practices-Equity-Research-Analysts/dp/0071736387
Dive in!
official book can be found on the website you sign up on. this is the question book which is how i passed. get the latest one if you can
You can buy the curriculum books on Amazon. Might be a good way to get into it without committing to the registration $$$. But the curriculum may change in a year, so I say just bite the bullet, register, and go for it!
You should take CFA Level I i will reccomend you a platform where you can easily get most reliable and verifeid questions for the preparations for CFA exam must follow this amazing URL and Start Your CFA exam in no time visit Here: https://tinyurl.com/ycxxvb7u
It's an error.
Here's the form to let CFA Institute know.
Here is what I made for my study - found out this morning I passed! Feel free to download and modify as needed.
Here is one such service; apparently there are others, but I haven't done a big search yet: https://gumroad.com/l/WTaIB
Other prep providers may offer essay review as part of a broader package. Obviously, I cannot personally vouch for the quality of any essay review service, as I haven't used it.
Thanks for the input. I wrote a script based on your explanation and it proves it nicely. It's [here][https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/MYewdgzgLgBADgUwE7AWKB5AZgJQVAVyUgEEookBLAIwKgENqAbBAFRAGF64BxeyyDAC8MAHQAWAFChIsRCjSZc+IqXJVaDZmxCt6AD0YsSwKJQBulMwgjCYARhgBaeMlTpseQsQhkKNOiMdLl5+SGlwaBgkeigETxViO1EABgBWCNkYBn0cWIRkgGZJSXN6JHgkfAMOEABbO...] for anyone interested.
The number of derangement has a fancy formula
see https://brilliant.org/wiki/derangements/
Once you have that, you can have P(only i tiles correct) = chose i tiles from 7 and then derange remaining ones = 7Ci*(!(7-i))/7! (sorry for this mess... not sure how to use this editor in math mode)
then you can find expectation.
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
For people who aren't subscribers, this has worked well for FT, WSJ, New York Times, and many others.
Join me and start coding on @SoloLearn! http://www.sololearn.com #freefunlearning
I’ve had a ton of fun using this app! I use it on my commute. I’m trying not to stop studying on a regular basis. Learning something else! Python is the way of the future.
I used datacamp.com after writing L2 last summer (they have courses on python and r for datascience and some specialised courses on finance with r). It isn't really cheap, but I really liked the very learning-by-doing approach of it. The Intro to Python and Intro to R courses are free.
Overall, I prefer R slightly to Python. The syntax seems much more intuitive and straight forward.
If you like R-Studio then definitely download the Anaconda Python distribution and use the packaged Spyder IDE - it's almost identical to R-Studio.
It comes packaged with all the scipy/numpy/pandas libraries and loads more besides - it also comes with Jupyter Notebooks and Spyder all integrated and included. Top Python distribution!!
Check this out : https://tinychat.com/room/gottastudy (password : getstudying)
It's an amazing community with people all over the world and from different fields (medical, biology, computer science, law ...) the users either share their desktop screen or put camera on to avoid slacking while study periods. and eventually they can chat and help each other during breaks :)
Check this out : https://tinychat.com/room/gottastudy (password : getstudying)
It's an amazing community with people all over the world and from different fields (medical, biology, computer science, law ...) the users either share their desktop screen or put camera on to avoid slacking while study periods. and eventually they can chat and help each other during breaks :)
If you are looking for people to keep you company and motivate u while studying, check this out : https://tinychat.com/room/gottastudy (password : getstudying)
It's an amazing community with people all over the world and from different fields (medical, bio, computer science, law ...) the users either share their desktop screen or put camera on to avoid slacking while study periods. and eventually they can chat and help each other during breaks :)
Okay fair enough. I'm confused about the difference between correlation and regression though in your first response.
You said regression doesn't tell you if X causes Y or Y causes X etc... but also that "a high t stat helps us distinguish between coincidence and cause". Is that contradictory or am I reading it wrong?
I assumed the point of regression is to show how X affects Y (specifically that order)?
​
Here's what I found online:
"correlation doesn’t capture causality but the degree of interrelation between the two variables. Regression is based on causality. It shows no degree of connection, but cause and effect... Correlation between x and y is the same as the one between y and x. Contrary, a regression of x and y, and y and x, yields completely different results.
I used like “rave earplugs” and haven’t had much of a problem but I use them for concerts as well: Rave High Fidelity Ear Plugs: HiFi Hearing Protection for Music, Concert; Noise Reducing Earplugs Help Stop Tinnitus; Ear Buds Filter Noise for Ear Protection (Black Case) (2 Pairs - 19/25 Decibel) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GJ6BERQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_N7E6KA7TJ1PHWDK71J7X
I will suggest you to change your study methods. Learning how to learn by brabra okly may help you in that. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
Also statistics without Tears by Derek Rowntree make your life easy in Quant. Statistics without Tears: An Introduction for Non-Mathematicians https://www.amazon.in/dp/0141987499/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_A6XKNJSZHB5P7F8S40F9
Python, SQL and knowledge of databases in general. EXCEL < learn how to use it properly. Tableau and Power BI, etc.
I didn't earn a modelling certification. I personally think they are useless. Just work through this textbook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FH8GJJC/
The correct 2019 materials are available from Amazon UK.
​
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Program-Curriculum-2019-Level-Volumes/dp/1946442259
I see on Wiley’s website they are hugely overpriced which usually it’s the same on Amazon. Can see the link here CFA L3 Curriculum
I use an app which shows me how much time I spent on each app IN REAL TIME. It also has some advanced features like app lock but I never needed them. The timer was enough for me. Give it a try https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindefy.phoneaddiction.mobilepe
Anytime. Here is the amazon link to the exact copy I bought:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118873734/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It is the "University Edition" which just includes essentially EOCs for each chapter... I've found them to be pretty helpful.
Agree with EpicAlcohol, this is extremely vague. Do you know what securities the team invests in?
If it’s active equity, this is the canonical text book that everyone will tell you to read. It’s actualy very skimable since the chapters are broken up into a theory section and a math section.
Feel free to PM me for some more info. I was in a similar situation recently.
I highly recommend the Tao Te Ching for aspiring investors and also Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
The lessons are applicable to anyone's life, but some of the stoicism and focus ideas apply heavily to investing.
I used these and still use them (and no it’s not a referral link haha):
Ear Plugs for Sleeping, Shooting & Study - 30 Pairs Individually Wrapped NRR33 Noise Cancelling Soft F... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZU2VIR2
Just checking to be sure, you mean these books?
It'll give you a decent foundation. But I guess, the more important question, is what are you hoping to learn? CFA will cover derivatives, accounting, debt, equities, corp fin., etc. Which might be too much to digest depending on what you want to learn.
You could also consider Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga depending on your goals.
Hawking snake oil implies fraud, directing people to a great study resource is not fraudulent. Perhaps you should also pick up a copy of one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Merriam-Webster-Dictionary/dp/087779930X
Working through the German tree on Duolingo and reading All the Shah's Men.
Also, I havent heard much about Wiley on this subreddit.
Can someone give me an opinion on these books?
Thanks for the tip!
I just double-checked, you ARE allowed to use the professional on gameday:
https://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfaprogram/exams/Pages/policies.aspx
ANd it only costs $25 used on Amazon, so there's absolutely no reason not to have it on gameday.
edit: the link is to the calc I have.
Hey everyone, released Level 1 tonight and is now up on both android and ios (search GoStudy CFA) and you will see it ios at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gostudy/id1107827172 and android at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.gostudy.gostudy&hl=en