Toughest Study Session

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IAmNeil

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So tht we can best plan our study time - could anyone who has already been through the exam (or the majority of the study sessions) identify what they think are the two most difficult / time-consuming study sessions?
Thank you!
 
To be honest, for some reason,I always seem to struggle with SS5…i can be the only one though…what about you?
 
Haven’t got to it yet, but SS15 sounds more complex than most. That would depend on what kind of detail they get into.
 
SS9 (reading 24, the second half) and SS10, so far. As a retaker, not expecting much trouble the rest of the way until GIPS.
 
Agree with second half of SS9 and first half of SS10, SS5 is not very difficult, but it is time consuming and needs to be known well. for some reason SS15 clicks with me and I haven’t had a problem with it, but I think SS17 needs a lot of serious attention - even the easy parts like risk adjust return measures. You think you know them but there are minute details that can throw you off easily.
 
I think it will be different for everyone based on your individual background, but for me SS 15 is difficult as well as the section on taxes (in SS 4 or 5 I think) with the equations that were un-intuitive. Also currency gives me some trouble some times. At least so far, I’m sure that I’ll find more trouble areas as I keep working through the material.
 
I thought SS 9-10 (fixed income) was vague and difficult to get through. After struggling through derivatives in Level II, I expected the worst from SS 15, but found it quite workable (Don Chance’s writing style helped).
 
I think these posts address some of the more precise and rigorous areas on the curriculum and its true that you have to do the work in prep for them (spend time on them!). I find them very interesting as well for the most part.
But I would submit that where most folks hemorhage points at exam time is on the “qualitative” judgment stuff - the behavioural finance, ethics, aspects of GIPS, corporate governance , economics, and especially around interpretation of the various return requirement and tax and portfolio management fact patterns that are not hard in concept but challenging in the heat of the exam
 
My vote goes to the Economics section, Capital Market Expections in particular.
 
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