derivatives

P

patkeenan

New member
Joined
Jun 18, 2026
Messages
0
Reaction score
0
g’day
I’ve been through derivatives twice now (schweser only), and cant wrap my head around it. There seems to be too much detail to focus on. Anyone else having problems with derivatives? Any suggestions on how to get through this section?
 
pat, take a break and revisit this topic in a few days. Practice problems will help you immensely. It’ll be a whole lot easier for us to assist you with more specific questions.
 
i’m with u patkeenan. This is a tough one.. even with practice problems it still leaves me with a deep headache everytime.
 
break it down into manageable chunks. dont do it in one go. spot similarities forwards & futures. cap’s & floors. options and fixed income (backward induction). swaps is a nightmare i will agree.
have read it but not yet done any questions
 
schweser derivatives is an easy read. At first i started going through the CFA text (which i have for every other topic) but I found it terrible - just too much info.
once you have the concepts down…guaranteed points like quants - although the time series bit is a little annoying at first.
 
derivatives -the notation in the cfai texts is unneccessarily complicated.
with too many subscripts,superscripts and the like it is difficult to keep track. i think the schweser notation is much easier on the brain(and eyes)
 
I’ve taken the advice and stepped back from it for a few days…although some of it is starting to settle in. I think I am done with the CFAI material. I used it for FSA, AV, Quant, FI and found the schweser presentation to much more concise. I think I will only use CFAI for PM because a lot of people have said that schweser didn’t pull through in that area.
 
but i bet they have made it their issue to be all over it this year!! used schweser and if you do not understand then use the cfai materials
 
morning,
I too found schwser derivatives hard to grasp so after reading it twice, I went to the CFAI texts and I found that although they get into some lengthy detail they helped learn the material a lot!
Practice problems are key for this topic.
 
I found Schweser to be really, really good on derivatives, and immesurably better than they were for level 1 in 2007 at explaining futures and forwards (haven’t hit options or swaps yet). I got the forwards section and the futures section first time through. At level one, even though it was a bit more basic, I still didn’t get it after about 4 passes through the material.
 
I haven’t touched it yet but I’m nervous for the L2 deriv’s. For those that have gone through it, how long is it taking you to grasp? Is it something that can be done in a week, 3-4 hours a day? I allowed myself extra time in my study schedule for it, but it’s one of the 2 areas that I didn’t do well on for L1.
 
Depends where your studying it from as well as what is your exposure to derivatives before reading this material?
I would think it would get done if you study 3-4 hours every weekday and 8-10 hours on each of the two days of a weekend to get it done from CFAI (i.e. 7 days in all). But then again, I have no exposure to derivatives so it took me that long – maybe others have done it much faster than me. Though, I still wouldn’t say I have a complete grasp over it – it takes time and continuous practice.
 
thanks adb-
Same boat. Not that much in the way of exposure to derivatives but not a complete a$$ clown either. Was hoping that 25 hours would do it and sounds like it may be somewhere in that range.
 
GMofDen Wrote:
——————————————————-
> I haven’t touched it yet but I’m nervous for the
> L2 deriv’s. For those that have gone through it,
> how long is it taking you to grasp? Is it
> something that can be done in a week, 3-4 hours a
> day? I allowed myself extra time in my study
> schedule for it, but it’s one of the 2 areas that
> I didn’t do well on for L1.
Using Schweser, forwards took me about 1.5 hours and futures took 1 hour, and I feel pretty damn comfortable with it. Options is tonight and it looks fairly long, so I’ll weigh in tomorrow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top