What CFA syllabus lacks

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Optimist85

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After knocking out all 3 levels, I feel CFA curriculum didn’t prepare me as it should have.
It lacks the basic financial modeling lessons that are the essence of every finance job these days plus it also needs to incorporate spreadsheet based testing to develop these skills in candidates. It is considered to be the ‘Gold’ standard and generally people think of charterholders as Gurus of finance but the curriculum isn’t a complete package to make someone who is working in another industry all set for entry into financial world.
share your thoughts
 
Nothing hinders you from modelling the CFA curriculum questions in Excel. That’s what I did wen I studied for Level 1.
 
I think that CFA curriculum is theory and understanding, with the objective of giving the candidates a good base for analysis, not how to create formulas on spreadsheets. As Oscar says, we need to do the practice at the same time.
 
Harrogath wrote:
I think that CFA curriculum is theory and understanding, with the objective of giving the candidates a good base for analysis, not how to create formulas on spreadsheets. As Oscar says, we need to do the practice at the same time.
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+1
 
IsThereAny wrote:
That’s what the required 4 years of relevant work experience is for.
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well I’ve seen marketing guys get the charter as they explained well how they contributed to investment decision making process..that was also relevant experience… they never opened excel..
 
’Oscar’ wrote:
Nothing hinders you from modelling the CFA curriculum questions in Excel. That’s what I did wen I studied for Level 1.
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this is an excellent approach and I’ll suggest you to carry it on to level 2 (level 3 won’t ask you much numbers)
still hardcore financial modeling is far away from CFA books
 
i think you are off base. it is theory based and i don’t think they try and pretend like they’ve prepared you to be the perfect financial analyst/modeller.
it’s up to you to learn to do the rest….just like university degrees don’t teach you everything you need to be a perfect professional, the cfa wont either
 
the policy of only using authors with cfa charterholder status is the biggest problem.
L2 FX and FI readings are particularly bad imo… devalues the exams.
 
Optimist85 wrote:
’Oscar’ wrote:
Nothing hinders you from modelling the CFA curriculum questions in Excel. That’s what I did wen I studied for Level 1.
Click to expand...
this is an excellent approach and I’ll suggest you to carry it on to level 2 (level 3 won’t ask you much numbers)
still hardcore financial modeling is far away from CFA books
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Heavy Excel modeling on Corporate Finance topics is what I have been doing in my job for many years and still doing at times.
The value of using Excel in the curriculum is however not so much the modelling experience, but that it really helps to get a deeper understanding of the underlying assumptions of a lot of concepts. As an example you can quickly simulate how different variables affect a bond duration or convexity. For me that was really helpful.
 
Optimist85 wrote:
IsThereAny wrote:
That’s what the required 4 years of relevant work experience is for.
Click to expand...
well I’ve seen marketing guys get the charter as they explained well how they contributed to investment decision making process..that was also relevant experience… they never opened excel..
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My guess is they embellished their “contribution” to the investment decision making progress. I do not think the test was designed for marketing guys.
 
onlysimon wrote:
the policy of only using authors with cfa charterholder status is the biggest problem.
L2 FX and FI readings are particularly bad imo… devalues the exams.
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Yes, agree, I used textbooks more than the curriculum. FX readings were the worst, waste of time. Fabozzi’s book on FI was better than his CFA writings. Used Thomas Miller for Derivatives.
 
which book will anyone recommend for one to learn financial modelling. really need the skill
 
suspense wrote:
which book will anyone recommend for one to learn financial modelling. really need the skill
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Try Financial Modelling by Simon Benninga
 
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