Elan ethics opinion

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ramjam293

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I just wanted to pass along my opinion of the ethics material from Elan Guides. I’ve read a bunch of reviews stating that they do not cover it well and you should study straight out of the CFAI curriculum. I watched the videos with Peter Olinto and thought he was great. I like his style of going through the book and marking it up with notes. I follow along and make the notes in my book. Plus he’s energetic which helps long sessions. After watching the videos, I went back through the book and basically just read the stuff that I wrote or material that I underlined or starred.
One annoying thing though is that Elan doesn’t have practice problems for Ethics. At the end of the ethics video Peter talks about using practice problems to really hammer home your understanding of ethics and they don’t even have them! But I did the 43 end of chapter questions at the end of the CFAI ethics curriculum and only got four wrong. They were all soft dollar questions. And I don’t think that Elan did a bad job covering soft dollars, I think that I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. So I feel pretty good about Elan so far.
 
Soft dollars are covered in Level II, if memory serve. Are you discussing Level I or Level II?
 
Level I. He does mention that it’s covered more extensively in level II.
 
Peter’s an awesome instructor; I had the pleasure of working with him at Stalla.
Ethics is one area where the CFA Institute books do an excellent job. Regardless of what you think of Élan’s treatment of Ethics, you should read the original and work all of the problems.
 
S2000magician wrote:
Ethics is one area where the CFA Institute books do an excellent job. Regardless of what you think of Élan’s treatment of Ethics, you should read the original and work all of the problems.
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+1. I used CFAI exclusively for Ethics for all 3 levels. Don’t bother with Elan, Schweser or any one else.
 
ELAN in their videos and if you email them specifically state..don’t use their materials for Ethics. You are better off reading the CFAI material.
I used Elan this time. I felt they did a good job with the material…everything except fixed income …..because they weren’t able to finish that part of the material till 40 days before the exam which was nerve racking…..but since you are using that material now that shouldn’t be a problem for you.
 
I don’t recall them saying in the video not to use their materials for Ethics. I initially started to read the ethics out of the curriculum and my mind start to wander immediately. I don’t know how anyone can read 250 pages of something as boring as ethics and actually retain 70+%. Using the Elan material and taking the CFAI end of unit quiz I still got 39 out of 43 right. That makes me feel like I’m grasping the concepts to the CFAI’s expectations.
 
I just passed level 1 this summer. Trust me you should at least read through it once. It’s 15 percent of the exam you might as well spend the time on it.
The first time I failed in December I had the same attitude and I really paid for it when I got a band of 10. Don’t underestimate ethics just doing those EOCS on the CFAI book aren’t enough. I remember I was scoring like 17/18 normally on the mocks but you’ll see when you take the exam this December.
Second time this June I focused about 80 percent of my time on Equity, FRA and Ethics. I scored all above 70 except for Fixed income this time around. Fixed income I got 51-70.
 
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