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2012 CFA Level II Exam Study Days 100

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Ning Jia is currently a June 2012 CFA Level II candidate.

 

Ning is an assurance associate at Ersnt & Young, where he engages in financial statements audits for asset management firms such as Invesco. Furthermore, Ning is actively involved in stock investing and option trading. Ning managers a portfolio of stocks and ETFs for a couple of wealthy Chinese people. Previously, Ning was the Director of Finance at Designated Dawgs, Inc. He also helped some small businesses with the preparation of projected financial statements.

 

Ning received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting and Master of Accountancy from the University of Georgia (2011). In school, he served as the president of the Chinese Undergraduate Student Association and the president of the UGA Badminton Club. Ning was also a member of Beta Alpha Psi, Golden Key International and NASA.

 

Ning has passed the CPA and CMA examination and will be a Certified Public Accountant as well as a Certified Management Accountant upon completion of work experience requirements.

 

CFA Level II Month 1

Tuesday, 04 October 2011 21:00 | PDF | Print | E-mail
Ning Jia

This past month I've been focusing on knocking out derivatives and portfolio concepts. Derivatives are always fun. However, I'm not quite sure how useful it is to learn FRAs or CDSs. But anyway, options are my favorite part even though the CFA curriculum focuses way too much on the theory as opposed to real life application. It's good to have a better understanding of the Greeks and the BS Model though.

Portfolio management a heavily tested area. The problem is, no one's gonna use CML, SML or the efficient frontier when allocating your investments. Yeah, it's good to have a diversified portfolio but really, in this market, how about more on how to construct a portfolio during a volatile market, how about less on Beta or APT. The theories are sound but there's a reason why it's called a theory because it's remotely applicable.

Overall, this part is not hard at all. A lot of formulas and some overlap with level I. 8 more months, moving on to book 4-Alternative Investments and Fixed Income.

CFA Level II – Week #1 | Session 16: Derivative Investments: Forward & Futures

Sunday, 11 September 2011 15:50 | PDF | Print | E-mail
Ning Jia

It has been a stressful week studying for the CFA Level II exam while working full time on an big engagement team at E&Y. Derivatives have never been an easy subject but I've been fascinated by all kinds of derivative investments. Therefore, I've decided to kick off my Level II study with derivatives.

Level II focuses a lot more on valuation. Instead of pure memorization of all those dry formulas, I have been focusing on understanding the story behind the formulas. Basically for derivatives, all formulas boil down to finding the price or value of any derivative instrument at initiation, during life of the contract and at the end of contract.

The one theory that drives the price formulas is the no-arbitrage theory, which states that the contract price equals to the price that would not permit profitable riskless arbitrage in frictionless markets.

For valuation formulas, it's all about discounting St and FPt.

I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of derivatives now but definitely need to do a lot practice questions to master the subject.

My plan for next week is to conquer session 17-Option markets and contracts.

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