webtwister1, don't sell yourself short, nothing's obvious in these exams. Fixed income is its own animal and if you don't work with these securities daily, you have little reason to know wtf all these terms mean...
except now you're a CFA candidate and must know it all, probably better than you'll know your best friends and family in the months to come.
So but rather than me just defining the above terms for you, which you can just as easily look up in your study books and memorize, let my try to build a general, conceptual framework you can use to approach these problems.
Consider:
1) Who's who? Identify the lender/crediter and the borrower/issuer
2) Is there anything noteworthy about either party? Poor credit? Highly leveraged?
3) Tming of cash flows. When's the money coming in? What risks exist that the money won't be recieved as expected, or that there won't be any great reinvestment opportunities?
4) What special features does the fixed income security have? embedded options? Is it convertible into equity? What's its maturity? How senior is it? Is it securitezed? Who stands to benefit most from the bond's special features? For what are the proceeds being used?
5) What are market conditions like? Are investors highly risk averse? Are current interest rates relatively high or low? How are they likely to change? The answers to these questions help you determine how relevant any the of bond's special features are.
Regretably, there's no shortcuts here. You have to understand the nature of each security, which in turn leads you to knowledge of its susseptibilities, which may or may not come into play based on each counterparty's actions and current- and future market conditions...
Two random examples:
1) I know that zero-coupon bonds only pay-up at maturity --> therefore it follows that these securities have no reinvestment risk prior to maturity, but unfortunately they have the highest durations (their price is most sensitive to changes in interest rates).
2) I know that coupon bonds deliver payments over the life of the security --> therefore it follows that I have to do something with these cash recipts (like reinvest them, in beer), and there's risk that there won't be any great investment opportunities at those points in time. However, the duration on these bonds is relatively lower because I'm not missing the boat if interest rates rise (I can invest my coupon recipts at those nice, higher rates).
I'm rambling... just keep at it and one day soon you'll have an epiphany. In addition, if you post more specific questions, like why a particular fixed income security is exposed (or not exposed) to a certain kind of risk, we can give you more focused responses.
Cheers.