Most hated reading?

S

SpareTime

New member
Joined
Jun 18, 2026
Messages
0
Reaction score
0
What’s the one reading that had you blurting expletives for a few hours?
For me, Time Series was the most confusing, Intercorporate Investments was the most tedious, but Multinational Corporations was both confusing and tedious, so it gets my vote. I just finished reviewing that reading and I feel like punching something.
 
For me, Porter’s 5 competive forces + all that horizontal, vertical integration crap depending on what stage of the growth cycle the company/industry is in.
 
Currency exchange rates. I’m used to different type of quotation and the CFAI’s one continue to confuse me.
 
Ethics is horrible, as always. Corporate governance is just as bad. I hate derivatives too, except for options. Arbitrage using bid-ask in economics is horrendous.
The rest is pretty cool. I don’t get why FRA gets such as a bad wrap, it’s pretty sexy all in all, and quite easy compared to the rest.
 
Economics - almost all!
Quant - Autoregression, first order, time series, residual error,
Fixed income - interest rate volatility effects on option bonds onwards - somewhat confusing!
Portfolio - the moment adjusted beta creeps in, and then the quant sets in, information ratio, active risk, etc
FRA - Pensionary payments
—- shall write more as I see more! huh!
 
Portfolio Mgmt is just meaningless for me as a Graham & Buffett value investor acolyte. Volatility /= Risk!
But Time Series wins my vote because it’s the only reading I still don’t understand at all.
Intercorporate Investments and Multinational Operations are hard, but worth it I think because also quite applicable in practice.
 
Anything Econ related and anything that requires you to determine how to create synthetic alternatives (I’d give an example but I’d rather not take the time to try and figure one out that works).
 
Swaps. It seems so simple at a high level, but the devil is in the details. I have read the Schweser 3x, completed Schweser EOC 2x, and CFAI EOC 1x. Still not entirely sure what the hell I am doing.
 
In no particular order: economics, active management (information ratio etc.), FRA (pensions).
 
For both L1 and L2 it has invariably been anything Economics related.
The Ethics readings themselves always make tons of sense and I’m like “got it, no problem”. Then I get to the actual problems…
 
I’m surprised to see all the hate on for porter’s 5 forces and active management. Those two didn’t stick out for me. I’m glad to see some other people who struggled with Time Series though. The entire second half of that reading is almost a complete write off for me…
 
^ The first time I went through quant last October, reading 11 made no sense to me. But I reread it again just a couple months ago and I understood it fine. Funny how that works.
 
Anything to do with leases and capitalization, fra in general. Porters five forces is a breeze compared to that
 
Econ. Period.
Active management seems kinda ridiculous to try to quanitify but it wasnt a painful read.
Most loved: Quant, options, equity
 
At this point for me its everything. Yeah, I know … but I am still going to sit for it :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top