Life after deciding the CFA is not for me...

jpm wrote:I actually work in manager due diligence and have been for many years. Yes, I think I am very good at my job. However, some people look at the world like JoeyD, which negates my skill somewhat for those.
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C’mon be honest about this - you took the exam four times and didn’t even come very close to passing. The world of finance is much deeper than the CFA exams and you couldn’t even do the first one. Everybody would probably like to tell you that you can be great at doing due diligence (due diligence on what I wonder) but you just don’t know very much about finance and you likely never will.
You’re right that I would hire a CFA charterholder instead of you for just about any job in finance. People here are taking the CFA exam so they can be in that group. Finance is aming the most competitive fields on earth. Why should someone want someone on their team who has just really proven that they don’t know anything about finance and can’t learn?
 
Joey-for the past year I’ve been doing due diligence on your wife!!
 
Joey, for someone so high and mighty, you sure sound novice. Manager DD is basically about evaluating the person not the numbers…its more of a psych/socio valuation than a financial assessment. You don’t need to know complexities of finance in order to do “human due diligence”. The reason JPM needs it is because as you do become more senior you have to pull the human evaluation together with the financials and make comparisons.
Get the materials from your friends that took the CAIA JPM…Looking the material over should give you an idea of if its worth your time or not.
 
jpm wrote:I appreciate your input. The problem I see is that I can’t run from this issue as long as I stay in this industry (in this position). This will chase me throughout my career.
I appreciate the pep talk, but at the end of the day, if managers expect this of me, they can make my life difficult or at a minimum, unpleasant. Also, future interviews for senior level jobs? Without a CFA in any big city, I can forget getting a job in investment management, due-diligence or investment consulting. The only shot would be a junior level job and even then they would expect me to be a candidate or that I passed L1.

sorry, i didn’t mean it as pep talk if that’s the way you see it.
 
Sorry ebowsaah. I was just trying to get my point across. I do appreciate your input.
 
TPACFA wrote:Joey, for someone so high and mighty, you sure sound novice. Manager DD is basically about evaluating the person not the numbers…its more of a psych/socio valuation than a financial assessment. You don’t need to know complexities of finance in order to do “human due diligence”. The reason JPM needs it is because as you do become more senior you have to pull the human evaluation together with the financials and make comparisons.
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I completely disagree. You’re going to go talk to a manager and have no idea if what he is telling you is the truth because you dont even know finance to the level of CFA 1 (and you’re not smart enough to pass a not extraordinarily difficult exam after four tries)? I’ve been part of tons of hedge fund due diligence. If I sat down across from this guy and decided that I was using words he didn’t understand, he wouldn’t get much.
 
I concur - I know what they do and you do need to grow your knowledge pretty fast. Its not so much ‘human due diligence’ but if you don’t have a clue on what the fund manager is talking about, what chance do you have on assessing his/her ability to perform int he future? how do you assess his strategy?
I reckon the CAIA is better for him… why? Because its likely in his field of work he’d encounter a whole bunch of guys investing in commodities etc etc
 
JoeyDVivre is right on. You people saying he’s mean and harsh probably don’t work in finance, work in some back office, or just don’t have any real experience.
People who work in this industry and have passed L2 and L3 know that L1 is an utter joke. Yes, manager due diligence doesn’t require much analytical work, but L1 is about the absolute basics of finance, it doesn’t even get to the real valuation or IPS work. I would call L1 a minimum requirement for a basic foundation to the world of finance.
Failing one or two times MAY be understandable (life happens), but 4 times? I think you do need to rethink finance.
What will likely happen if you stay with your fund-of-funds job is that you’ll be stuck as a junior guy forever. If your fund hangs in there, you’ll stay. If the fund craters, you’re in trouble.
less than 100k charterholders TOTAL in the world now, sure it’s an elite club.
 
I’ve been doing this job for over 10 years. It has quantitative and qualitative aspects. You need to understand what the manager does and how they do it as well as the attribution and the statistics. This involves lots of writing-research reports and presentations.
I scored highest on quant and portfolio management on the CFA. I was weak on accounting.
Hedge fund DD is a different animal. This is more difficult for several reasons such as the operational DD involved and the exotic strategies the manager employs.
Regarding the CFA for this job, many DD analysts have the charter-especially as they become more senior.
 
OK-I came here for advice, so I got it. I haven’t written off a career change. What I struggle with most is what that would be.
 
jpm,
I believe the most important issue of this thread is the Time Constraint issue….please describe your problem. Hopefully, we can help you with it, at the very least we should be able to generate mulitple suggestions.
W
 
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