I’ve been studying pretty much exclusively with Schweser notes. Only referred to CFAI material when I got stuck, though didn’t find it of much help.
Summary of my studies so far.
Started studying in October and have done topics so far in this order.
Ethics: read through Schweser only, just skimmed it though and planning on reading CFAI text in May.
Quant: all relatively straightforward material but took me a while to get through this section. Only struggled a bit with understanding Hypothesis testing. What’s helpful with this section is that a lot of problem in other sections (i.e. Corp Fin, Eqt, etc) use what you learn in this section, so going through other section you review this material.
FRA: took me quite a while to get through this as well. Seems straightforward when I was just reading it, but then when I actually had to answer questions I realized I didn’t know the material. Also, having to know the differences between USGAAP and IFRS, my god, what a pain, my brain isn’t good at memorizing this sort of stuff. Planning on spending probably the same amount of time reabsorbing/re-reading this material again.
Econ: relatively straightforward. If you did Micro/Macro econ in college, this is mostly just a review. I struggled a bit in the Macro section (still fuzzy on IS/LM curves). This section also seemed to pass slowly.
Corp Finance: ok, this is where I just breazed through the material. I knocked off this topic in about a week with the notes, really straightforward. Heard this is meant to be an easy point scoring section.
Equity: also just breezed past this section, just seemed to me like reading a book, just now finishing the last section on Equity valuation which is probably the hardest.
So, topics left to read in this order:
Portfolio Mgmt - Looks short but with some parts potentially complicated requiring a lot of time to absorb.
Fixed Income - looks a little intimidating, especially part on valuations at the end. Seems interesting though.
Derivatives - I work in this area, so should be easy, otherwise I would think this would be quite a complicated section for people new products like options.
Alternative Investments - looks pretty easy.
After I finished the first readings, I plan on going through light reviews of each section and using QBank to test myself, creating flashcards along the way (which I should really have been doing but haven’t). And then repeat the above until May arrives and then start doing practice exams.
Ok, back to work now.
Good luck everyone.
