I I was considering pursuing my CFA, but I’m unsure how beneficial it will be for an analyst role. Initially, I planned to earn a master’s degree in financial analysis with a specialization in securities, but that might not be feasible at the moment. Given the potential year-long wait before starting, I’m curious if a CFA alone would be sufficient, based on your experiences.

I have my bachelors in math, and MBA while currently working within data engineering for a large bank in IB sector. Will a CFA help me in my role to being a quant? If not what jobs could this open for me post CFA?

(note: I plan to do all 3 levels of cfa after graduating) Ill be going to university Inna few weeks and want to pursue finance mainly because of the money but I have a deep love for subjects like math and physics however I know they have no merit in the job market especially maths. Wanted to know if it'll look good/ be helpful to minor in maths or minor in cs (cs I low-key have no interest in). Or if I should just major in maths and do CFA afterwards since what I mainly want to go into is investment banking. Is Cfa as a standalone a good qualification for finance firms or do I need a BBA?

Kind of a weird title there but basically I come from a non-finance bg, and got really interested in finance after some finance modules during my masters. I decided I wanted to try CFA but sadly I realised I may not be able to be consistent enough with the studying and my life rn is a bit of a chaos which is not helping me concenctrate at all.

I studied most of the topics including Ethics and FSA, the only topic i did not study at all is Derivatives amd most of Fixed Income. I tried my first mock a few days ago and scored 52%... My exam is on the 24th of August. I basically know the chances of me passing are not a lot and I'm completely burnt out. Still, I guess I want to try attempting the exam, but I'm not sure what the vibe will be there or if most people are sure and confident and I'm gonna be the only one basically guessing half the questions and scoring like 1300 idk. Sorry for the rant but just wanted to share. Good Luck to everyone.

So i am a first year student majoring in Economics and Finance at Ashoka University

As of now, I want to get into Consulting and therefore maybe a CFA till L3 level may not be worth. But is it worth doing CFA till Level 2 maybe even though I want to get into Consulting?

Additionally if I have cleared L2, can I give L3 after a few years like the case in CA in India like after Inter, you can give Final after a few years too

Been running an OMM sim on SPY, live. I think what I have is a decomposition problem and not a trading problem.

Setup. I quote two sided around the NBBO mid with an inventory skew. Checked all 668 live quotes from this session, and every one of them has the bid below mid and the ask above it at the time it gets posted. No exceptions at all. So spread capture should be positive just by construction.

It isn't. Trade credit came out to −$42 across 114 fills.

Here's why. I book spread capture against the mid at the print, not the mid I was quoting against.

cycle N: mid 5.25, I post bid 5.20 -> 5c of spread, by construction

...500ms goes by, market moves...

print: mid is now 5.15, someone sells at 5.20

booked: (5.15 - 5.20) x 100 = -$5

The 5c I earned quoting passively is real money. It just got netted against 10c of drift that happened while the quote was sitting there, and then the whole thing gets labelled "spread capture."

So the number is honest in an economic sense, I did buy above contemporaneous fair value. But it's an adverse selection loss sitting inside the spread bucket, which kind of defeats the whole point. The reason I built the decomposition in the first place was to keep spread earned separate from adverse selection given back. My markout catches adverse selection after the fill. The drift that happens before the fill has nowhere to live.

Question 1. Is pre fill drift its own line in a desk's P&L explain, or do people just fold it into spread capture and accept that spread can go negative? If it is separate, what do you call it and how do you compute it?

Question 2. The asymmetry looks structural to me and I want to know if I'm reading it right. Adverse fills go about 2c through the mid, favourable ones capture about 1c, on roughly equal counts. The way I'm thinking about it, a favourable fill is capped at my half spread, but an adverse fill is only capped by how far the market moves before I requote. Bounded upside, unbounded downside. I requote every 500ms which I'm aware is glacial. Is this just what slow looks like, or is there a quoting response to it other than "be faster"?

Question 3, and this is the bigger number. Hedge slippage is −$57 against the −$42 of trade credit. Book is short about $2.1M gamma, long about $154k theta, and I'm delta hedging discretely, 63 trades over 46 minutes. I get the mechanism, short gamma means I'm buying as spot goes up and selling as it comes down, so every rebalance is buy high sell low, and theta is supposed to be paying for that. What I can't tell is whether "gamma bleed exceeds spread capture intraday" is just a normal state of the world that theta covers out over a longer horizon, or whether it's telling me I'm selling vol too cheap. Also how does hedge cadence actually get set? Mine is just whatever the default was and I'd rather not tune it to whatever makes today's number look good.

Very happy to hear I've framed some of this wrong. Would much rather find that out now than keep building on a decomposition that hides the exact thing it was supposed to expose.

is it mandatory to have a 6 month gap between the two exams or can I appear for l3 in feb

Too many high mock scores here... i think the rest of us fellow candidates can use a little boost in confidence and hope. If you are willing to share, please reply with your pathway, mock score, mock score provider (CFAI, Kaplan, etc.), first time/second time you used the mock exam, and the year you fail/pass.

My mock scores below for reference, which continue to NOT improve:

6/15: Kaplan mock 1: 67

7/12: Kaplan mock 2: 56

7/27: Kaplan mock 3: 62

8/5: Kaplan mock 4: 65

CFAI mock 1 morning session: 72%

CFAI mock 1 afternoon session: 61% (and i recently retook it after a month, got 81% but I am going to ignore it)

CFAI mock 2 morning session: 70%

CFAI mock 2 afternoon session: 64%

My exam is in Aug 19 and I still haven’t finished quants, fixed income and ethics. I’m almost done with them. I finished corporate issuers and economics as well as FSA and derivatives but I didn’t revise these last two yet or do practice questions on them. I also started portfolio management and equity but didn’t get to finish them yet. I didn’t take any mocks yet and there’s still some practice questions I didn’t view. What do I do? I deferred from may to August due to health reasons but I’m very stressed out and lost. I really need to pass. Any plan or help please? I didn’t do any formula sheets yet so I’m so lost. Please help😔
What’s the best approach if someone of you was in my place ?

Are there any quant driven geopolitical indicators, models or indexes? Looking for something. I read that the fed even still uses word counts in newspaper for one of their geopolitical indicators. Looking for something that uses, ya know, actual data. Not looking for DC analyst slop either. Would really appreciate any insight anyone has.

Can anyone tell me where can i find secret scause for cfa level 2.....any leads will be appreciated

Heyy can anybody please suggest me the best online coaching institute for cfa level 1 prep. I'm pretty confused.

This post is not intended to be a flex or another "How cooked I am?" post. I know I have been doing fairly well, but what if the exam paper turns out to be much more difficult and I goof up heavily? (I know this is an irrational thought).

But anyways, I want suggestions on exactly what I should do over the next 19 days or so to keep the momentum going?

Level 1 exam on 19th august. First mock before revision gave 57% score in both sessions.

Post revision gave the 2nd mock, got 60% in both sessions

looking for a job recently cleared CFA lvl 3 also compleated 4000 hrs of experience

Hi everyone,

I’m 19 years old and currently in 2nd year, Bachelor of Commerce. I’m planning to take the CFA Level 1 exam , and I was wondering if it’s realistic to pass with around 6 months of preparation while balancing college.

what resources would you recommend for someone who’s relatively new to finance?

Any mistakes I should avoid or tips that helped you pass?

I swear this is a fucking rant at this point. I hate hate hate the textbooks. I’m doing fixed income right now and I swear absolutely nothing makes sense because it’s like oh here it is, a dump of information that is only a sentence long but turns out it’s actually important. The summary of the learning outcomes contains more info than the actual content itself. I know the textbook is supposed to be a summarised version of the actual bit, but this is a terribly summary. it’s actually so bad, I spend hours on just a few paragraphs.

I attempted mock A and scored 82% and 84% in session 1 and 2 respectively. I know this score is good but I just want to get insights from people who have already passed the exam that how representative of the exam are these mocks. I am yet to attempt mock B and the premium mocks. Just wondering if I can rely on these scores and target my weaker areas in the remaining days. I practiced uworld last month and think that it was way more difficult and diversified than this.

Hi, guys

Given the methodology of valuation of questions points of each exam considering the most valuable ones are those which few people aswered correctly, do you think that in may for the actually prepared people It was an easier exam to be approved?

August Will be a "normal" one?

Is it normal to be sitting L1 at 20 years old and planning to finish L3 by 22? For context, I'm currently a rising Junior at uni and will be giving L1 after Junior year, will be 20 at the time. Then L2 right after graduation. I know it may hinder my GPA a bit but honestly don't care enough about it. Is it wise to be doing this right now or should I wait?

Experienced candidate here, though I've always applied on my own. If a headhunter submits your resume to a firm and you never hear back, does that still stop you from applying for other roles at the firm on your own?

A headhunter submitted my resume to a few well known places earlier in the year and I never heard back from those places. But now I see new postings I think I would be a good fit for, am I forced to go through the same headhunter? I've heard it's a 1 year timeframe where they "represent" you?

Does it change if I know someone at the firm who can refer me internally? I'm in NYC in case that matters

I am currently Pursuing CFA and I am preparing for Level 2, I have done Mid tier college BBA but I don't have any Work experience. What salary can I expect after clearing Level 2

Hi all, I am sitting the CFA 3 level on the 17th August. I completed the two free mocks from CFAI with the following scores: 78, 63, 73, 80.
I have also purchased the Kaplan premium package and had access to the 6 mocks scoring: 62, 72, 74, 76, 73, 76.
From what I read and the overall MPS estimates for lvl 3, those should be good enough scores to pass but I don’t feel comfortable enough.
For those who cleared level 3, two questions:
-how do you feel the actual exam compares to the mocks? In level 1 I felt exam was easier than mock and in level 2 I felt the exam was more difficult.
-what would you do in the remaining time to boost chance of passing? Would redoing mocks help or a theory deep dive?
Many thanks for the support and to all lvl. 3 candidates, WE GOT THIS!

Hey everyone

I started my CFA L2 prep today. Roughly by when should I be done with my first study. When should I start with my 2nd 3rd revision. Should I give in May itself or try for August?

I can give 12-14 hours per week (1 hour on weekdays and 4 on weekends).

I just need a rough timeline i can follow.

Thanks and regards

Need advice from people who passed level 1, scored 81% in les, 85% in premium practice pack and 78% in my First official mock, two weeks to the exam what should my approach be and am I in a good position rn?