I'm typing this on a plane on my way out to Phoenix to visit my best friend who moved out there recently. I wrapped up Study Session 9 this week which marks the midway point of the studies for Level 2 in June. I have to say, only halfway thru and this is already much harder than I anticipated and definitely a step up from Level 1. The material isn't difficult, it's just so much to absorb and master and a lot of it is brand new even for someone like me who has a MBA and a MS in Finance. I was lucky enough to see some of the Quant stuff in my MSF program and I'm hoping I covered some of the derivative and fixed income material as well. The accounting piece was brand new to me top to bottom which is probably why I struggled with it. I'll definitely have to go thru each SS again to really master it come exam time.

Since I have a 5 hour flight to sit thru, I'm using some slidess from Schweser that summarize the Level 2 material. I figure it's a good way to review the core concepts I've covered so far so I don't forget them. As I went thru the slides I noted what areas I felt weak on and would need to focus come review time.

Ethics - Overall strong area for me. Lots of problems will help drill this stuff home come exam time.

• Areas of Focus - Soft Dollar Standards, Prudent Man vs Investor, Research Standards

Quant - Another strong area for me. A lot of this I saw in my MSF courses but some of it is new.

• Areas of Focus - ANOVA table calcs, assumption violation(serial correlation etc), time series

Economics - Definitely my weakest area by far. Only one item set so not gonna get too bogged down here.

• Areas of Focus - entire reading. Probably just going to use the Secret Sauce to review high level core concepts and aim for the best.

FRA and Corp Finance - Decently strong here.

• Areas of Focus - Pensions, Intercorporate Investments

I also watched a lecture on Equity.

#CFA To follow up on the earlier post, while I still need to drill down on specific areas in each SS, this is a high level ranking of where I feel I'm strong/weak at for each SS up to this point

1. SS1 - 2 - Ethics - STRONG - I remembered lots from L1 and review time in the past month will ensure I own this area



2. SS3 - Quant - STRONG - I owned this in L1 and a lot of this stuff I covered in my MSF curriculum.



3. SS4 - Econ - WEAK - Not too worried, I felt weak in L1 Econ but did well enough to get over 70%. This is only 1 item set anyway. I will review it but not devote too much time to it during my last month.



4. SS5 - 7 - FRA1 - MEDIUM - I will definitely reread this stuff top to bottom in the last month. I did the same for L1 and it worked well. I do need to take a day to list my strengths/weaknesses so I know where to focus more.



5. SS8 - STRONG - Only the one area to bone up on and I should be fine.

#CFA Did a PassMaster session on the first part of SS8 tonight. Not too bad. Corp Finance was a strong area for me in school and on L1 so I expect to do well here on L2.

I probably should have started doing this much earlier, but I'm going to begin listing what I feel are my strengths and weaknesses in each Study Session so I know where to focus come review time. I'll try to go back thru the earlier SS's and ID areas I'm strong at and can gloss over and areas where I need to really reread the material and do lots of problems. I'll start with this SS and make it a habit to list them after I quiz myself.

Strengths

• 
  



• Using the EAA(Equivalent Annual Annuity) approach



• 
  
  
  



• Effects on inflation on Budgeting



• 
  
  
  



• Capital Rationing



• 
  
  
  



• Project Risk Analysis and Market Risk



• 
  
  
  



• Real Options



• 
  
  
  



• Budgeting Pitfalls



• 
  
  
  



• Budgeting Alternatives



• 
  

Weaknesses

• 
  



• Projecting Cash Flows - This stuff isn't hard, I just need to go thru it top to bottom again to drill it home. Started to get it after I went thru the quiz questions a 2nd time.



• 
  

I also began reading the next section in SS8 to get a headstart on the weekend. Will be taking tomorrow off to rest a bit and actually experience life before taking the weekend to finish SS8 and start SS9.

#CFA OK ignore what I said about SS7 being pretty easy. After a quiz session in Passmaster and Qbank I walked away scared. I don't know if this will be true come exam time, but it seems you need to really remember a lot of the adjustments that get made on the financial statements and not just at a high level. I mean knowing exactly when to add back depreciation expense at the right tax rate, etc etc etc. I can't imagine the real thing will actually expect you to know that level of detail but some of the Schweser questions were very difficult if you didn't recall the exact process to adjust the statements. You also better know the ratios down cold which is something I struggled with initially. I'll need to make some flashcards or a formula sheet and just have them memorized along with the Dupont model.

Just to prevent me from jumping off the balcony I decided to see what kind of questions the CFAI text asked at the end of readings 24-26 and those don't seem to be as intensive as some of the Stalla/Schweser ones so maybe I'm just blowing this out of proportion. Whatever the case may be, I will need to do a complete top to bottom review of FRA during the last month. Part of me wants to do it now, but I don't think it's worth it, I'm likely to push the schedule out further and forget the material anyway. With the weighting what it is, I'm better off lumping it with the final review of Ethics during the final month so it's fresh come exam time.

At any rate, tomorrow's plan is to review and quiz the first part of Corp Finance(SS8 - Capital Budgeting). I'll probably take Friday off to rest my brain a little before trying to finish the remainder of Corporate Finance(SS8-Capital Structure and Leverage and Dividend Policy) Saturday. I'll then try a Progress Exam for SS1-8 Sunday and begin SS9. I mentioned I want to leave at least a month of review time and I think I can accomplish that if I follow this schedule.

#CFA I watched the Stalla lectures tonight for Study Session 7 and did some basic quizzing. This stuff is pretty easy all things considered, especially since a lot of it leverages the material from L1, especially when it comes to the DuPont analysis stuff. It's definitely worth reviewing some of the L1 concepts. Stalla has a good PDF that reviews it located here.

Most of this came right back from L1 after looking it for a while. I'm going to reread the two sections in the study notes tomorrow night and finish the quizzing including the item set questions before moving on to the first part of Corporate Finance on Wednesday.

I also obtained the Schweser QBank which I will be using as part of my quizzing going forward. I've discovered the QBank questions are more "CFAI like" than Stalla's questions. I'll use Stalla's for my initial quizzing but then use QBank over the weekend for my final reviews. I'm also going to try to get thru all of Corporate Finance by the end of this coming weekend. I'd like to take 1-2 weeks off my current study schedule so I have a full month of review. Right now I'm scheduled to finish the initial readings the week of 5/17 which only gives me 2 weeks of review. I think I can speed up and finish by 5/7 which gives me almost a full month to review, and take mock exams left and right.

#CFA Over last two nights I studied SS6 which covers Pensions and Multinational Operations. I switched up my routine a little bit and instead of doing the readings first, I decided to watch the lectures first and then do questions. This has worked really well for me so far, the material makes more sense watching the lecture than simply reading a bunch of text. I find I can get to the core concepts earlier and grasp them faster this way. I felt like I had to reread the study guides a few times to understand the stuff and it was draining. This way I can cover the material faster and use the study guides to fill in the blanks as I go thru the quizzing.

This material was not that bad, I really got the hang of it on first try. I don't think I could have grasped this material this fast simply reading the texts. Peter Olinto really does a great job of presenting this stuff and working thru problems designed to help you master it.

I think my new routine from now on will be:

Mondays - Watch lectures and quiz

Tuesdays - Watch remaining lectures and quiz

Wednesdays - Requiz on Monday's material and do item sets

Thursdays - Requiz on Tuesday's material and do item sets.

Friday - OFF

Saturdays/Sundays - Review notes, reread study guides and fill in the blanks with any lessons learned from the quizzing.

Of course each study session is different and the schedule may not work out exactly, but at a high level this is what I'll stick to the rest of the way.

#CFA Went to library today to quiz on SS5. I need to reread this section top to bottom as my first pass was not that good. None of this is hard, just a lot of little nuances to remember. Not too worried, a re-read of the material and going thru my notes will help me own this on my second pass of the quiz which I'll do tomorrow.

By the way, here's Stalla's advice on SS5

I did do a progress test today on SS's 1-4. Total of 30 questions weighted by section. No review at all. Decided to leave SS5 out as it was fresh in my mind so not a true representation of what I would retain given a week away from it. I think I'll do that gong forward, make sure progress tests do NOT include the material I just finished reading and quizzing on.

Answered 25/30 correct for a score of 83%. You can't read too much into these tests as they're not true representations of actual exam item sets. The questions will sometimes be in Level 1 format testing concepts, other's are single questions based on an entire Level 2 style vignette. The good news is that I recalled a lot of the Quant stuff I had reviewed last week so I think that area will be a strength of mine going forward. I actually got most of the Econ questions right but too small a sample size to really get excited. A different set of questions could have easily thrown me for a loop. Ethics was good for me too. Reviewing that the last month will really help me own it come exam time. Overall I'm pleased with where I stand now. I know the weak areas I need to focus on and given my plan, I think I'm in good shape.

Began SS5 today which covers Intercorporate Investments. I quickly realized how much of the Level 1 accounting I had forgotten. I also realized why I love Stalla and Peter Olinto. There's just no way I could have comprehended this material by simply reading the text which I did before I watched the lecture. If you've never watched Peter deliver a lecture, especially on FRA which is his specialty(he's a CPA who handles most of the CPA material for Becker, Stalla's parent), he's worth the price of admission alone. You can find some of his stuff on YouTube mostly for CPA topics. Not only does he distill the concepts down to easily understandable chunks, he makes you write a TON in the lecture notes which helps you "get" the material. I could only get thru half of the lecture which was 2.5 hours long because my hand was hurting, seriously. I'll finish up tomorrow.

The material isn't that bad, just a lot of small details to remember and going thru the example problems with Peter helps a lot in mastering the material. I got thru Partial Goodwill before putting it down.

Plan is to wrap up rest of lecture tomorrow, maybe do a bit of the quizzing in PassMaster. I'd like to get thru everything by Wednesday night as I have some commitments Thursday and Friday. This should put me in good shape to use the weekend to really drill this stuff home before moving onto SS6. I'm also pushing the progress test back to this weekend as well and will incorporate SS5 into it.

OK, I started off slow with Quant but picked it up towards the end. I'm good with multiple and simple regression. Once you get thru a few practice problems and understand the common threads it's actually quite easy. Time Series was a bit harder but again, once I was able to get the hang of it towards the end. I suspect most questions from time series would probably be qualitative in nature while you may find more calculations in the multiple regression area.

Stalla's PassMaster software is good but they seem to have too many calculation questions. I still don't like how you can't decide the difficulty of the questions you answer, something that QBank does give you. This is why I recommend using both if you can afford it.

Overall, I feel I'm in good shape for a progress test tomorrow. Ethics doesn't require much review at this point, Quant I'm good at right now because it's fresh, but Econ could be a challenge. I already forgot everything I read last week LOL. At this point though, I feel good about my progress so far. I've taken some good notes adding to the Stalla lecture notes which are a big help come review time.

Plan for this week is to take a weighted progress test tomorrow and then try to get thru a reading of FSA. This is the meat of the L2 stuff so I want to get a good jump on it.