On to Econ

First of all, the CFA institute was really on the ball. I ordered the books after business hours on Wednesday. They arrived by 5pm Friday. I don't know where the books were located, but standard delivery from VA to central FL usually takes more than 48 hours. Hell, standard delivery from Atlanta to central FL is 3 days. Anyway, I got the new books which included the new reading for study session 10. SS10 is pretty much an intro to valuation, but the new reading had several new ways to calculate the required return rate (I'll just call it K for this post). For those who aren't into finance I won't go into detail but K is one of the fundamental concepts. Without K most of the level 2 cirriculum wouldn't exist. In fact, K is the foundation of level 1 as well. I now know about a half dozen ways to compute it. ThCFA people tend not to test new readings the first year, but it would be criminally negligent to walk into the exam without being fully prepared for this one. I can say that I am fully prepared on all of SS10 including the new reading. I even did pretty well on the practice questions. That means since it's Monday, it's time for a new study session.

Since I don't have the baby this week, I wanted a session with some meat to it. SS4 (economics) is perfect for me. First, it is the longest. It has over 100 pages of textbook reading (very dry stuff at times). It is divided into 7 readings and with only 6 questions on the exam you know they won't test on even half of the stuff. However you don't know what part they will test so you have to learn everything. Also, the currency exchange that I learn in this session is imperative in other areas. The session is largely in two halves. The first is the ideological and conceptual stuff. This isn't a politcal blog but the people who write the economics texts are obviously McCain supporters. It boils down to gov't regulation is bad and the best countries in the world have the weakest investment laws. If you can't speak the company line it will probably hurt you on the exam. The second half of the session in foreign exchange. That area is trick for me. I understand the concept well, but the calculation can be a bitch. To convert from dollars to whatever you have to know whether to use the bid or ask price and whether to multiply or divide. If you get it wrong no worries! They have the wrong answer you just got as one of the 4 choices. You fill in the oval thinking you got the answer right until you get the results in August showing you got at least 3 of 6 quesitons wrong. Trust me I am talking from experience. I will be spending most of this week on currency exchange and GOP ideology, and if there's time leftover I'll review quants.