advice on Accouting, Financial Reporting & Analysis books

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PuneCFA

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Hello All,
I am currently preparing for CFA level2 but since I am from Engineering background so not good in accounting, Financial Reporting etc.
Could you please tell me what are best books for the topic I mentioned below except CFA books (which I don’t find that much useful in my case)
1. Basic Accounting and Accounting Principles ( like what to debit, what to credit etc )
2. Financial Reporting and Statements ( How to prepare financial reports from ledgers, accounts etc and details about all items on financial statements like goodwill,fixed asset etc)
3. Financial statements analysis like ratio analysis and detailed interpretation about different ratios what affect those ratios and how.
I won’t mind as if some1 tell me more on 1 book on any of these topics as I might understand may be one books not discuss everything in so much details. So one can tell me specific good book for each of these topics.
Thanks in advance!!
 
Firstly, you are in the wrong forum here. You should ask this in level II or even level I forum.
Secondly, how the hell did you pass level I if you seem to know nearly nothing about accounting since you are asking about ‘pre-level I’ knowledge?
Not knowing your real knowledge, here is some general pointers:
Try some books like
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Accounting or Accounting For Dummies or Reading Financial Reports For Dummies, if you want to know about how the ledger works, or introduction about FS.
For further accounting knowledge, try some of the standard introductory accounting books used in MBA classes: e.g.,
Introduction to Financial Accounting (10th Edition) (MyAccountingLab Series) [Hardcover]
Charles T. Horngren (Author), Gary L. Sundem (mostly USGAAP)
For more comprehensive IFRS treatment, try this
Financial Accounting: IFRS Edition [Hardcover]
Jerry J. Weygandt (Author), Paul D. Kimmel (Author), Donald E. Kieso (Author)
For Financial statements analysis like ratio analysis: reread your level I or go to amazon and search financial statement analysis and pick any of those books.
 
Damn, use the search function. Also, dont ask same questions in multiple forums. It’s annoying..
Anyway, just study for the level 2. If you don’t understand the basic, I highly doubt that you will pass the level 2 as accounting and equity investment are around 40% of the exam.
 
PuneCFA Wrote:
——————————————————-
> please some1 “advice” me
yessssss!
 
Thanks all for your advice.
Too be very frank and humble as I am from engineering background I am very little knowledge about accounts entry/ledgers though I am good in Financial reporting and analysis of that. Since Level1 doesn’t cover even a bit about accounting can answer how I would able to pass Level1.
but I am new in this domain and you can never be master of anything so soon, I want to read more and more about financial statements and analysis. Thats why I asked for good books.
 
The curriculum is all you need. Those books are big enough…
 
Hi there
I am also with engineering background and had to struggle with the lack of accounting background throghout my CFA journey. One thing you need to develope is to try and understand how any transaction will affect debit and credit sides.
So whenever you read anything; try and write corrosponding journal entries.Then go and search online for corrosponding examples on line(There are examples online for almost everything)
It helped me a lot and its definately helping now that I am working on my CPA.
Here are couple of books I would recommend (Go ahead and buy them.Trust me; they are good investment)
But the real learning will happen iff you develope the habbit of actually writing journal entries.If some one in your office can show you how the entire accounting cycle works that will be awesome.
Goodluck..
Let me know if u need any help.
Fraser and Ormiston, Understanding Financial Statements, Prentice-Hall, it is a paperback book.)
Intermediate Accounting, 13th edition, by Kieso, D.E., Weygandt, J.J., &
T.D. Warfield: Wiley.
 
The LOS’s have not changed very much in the past 2 years (one new chapter was added to L2 this year) to save on some $$ I’d advise look for the 2010 Schweser and Stalla material on FRA and use that with the CFAI material you have. That way you would have 3 sources to pull from that are all targeted at the same goal passing Level II.
I tried the CFAI texts for L2 but I found them very confusing at times and no matter what people say if you read all of Schweser or Stalla you will find everything has been covered. If you are stuck on a subject try Wikipedia it was a great source for me (look up Dupont equation as an example) they spell it all out for you.
Consider doing the CFAI EOC’s on FRA twice as MANDATORY (3 or 4 times is a good idea) start with the EOC’s on Schweser then move to CFAI. During my study last year I found a lack of quality questions on FRA to be a problem. For me the only way to understand the concepts was to work problems and there just was not that many high level multinational operations questions to study.
The Schweser Mock Exams have great questions that are equal to the difficulty you will see on the L2 exam.
My last bit of advise is to take notes, note cards etc and memorize all of the relationships and equations on this subject and just cram it in your brain examples:
(PBO = Service Cost + Int Cost + Past SC from Amnts +- Actuarial Gains/losses - Benefits paid)
(Net income, Equity Method Higher, Prop Cons middle, Full consolidation Lower)
BTW this is no small task, sorry for the bad news.
If you have all of the relationships nailed down like 2+2=4, a good 25% of the FRA section is as good as sealed for you.
 
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