I’m not really sure what just happened between September 25^th and today (October 19^th 2011) because I feel like I’m emerging from a black-hole of absolutely no CFA progress. While I would normally suspect laziness on my part, I’m reminded by friends that I just survived 3 grueling weeks of midterm exams and projects for Stochastic Processes in Finance, Systems to Support Quantitative Finance (C++ Programming), and Management of Financial Institutions at Georgia Tech. Be this as it may, I was still able to complete all of the Quantitative Methods reading in Study Session #3.

Departing from my usual study plan of simultaneously completing the readings and practice questions, I decided instead to work the Quantitative Methods practice questions towards the end of my study program in April / May 2012. The reasoning behind this decision stems from the fact that the miniscule details (just like with Ethics) will benefit me more on the back-half of the program since they’ll be fresh in my mind for the June 2012 CFA Level II exam.

Note to self – make sure to revisit these practice problems.

My undergraduate degree is in Statistics from The University of Tennessee, so many of the readings on Time-Series Analysis (special thanks to Dr. William Seaver, Ph.D. ) and multivariate regressions (Special Thanks to Dr. Hamparsum Bozdogan, Ph.D. and Charles M. Cwiek ) was a review from my Red Bull sponsored undergraduate days.

Within the next few weeks I’ll be loaded down with coursework for my MS-QCF degree, but I’m planning to make way for the Economics section within the next 1-2 weeks. This way I can finally put the first of six CFA Level II volumes into the curiously empty designated area for “work completed”.

One thing is for sure, the Christmas and New Years break from school is going to be filled to the brim with CFA Readings. I have a feeling I’m going to be stuck in a Delta SkyClub lounge reading CFA materials over the Christmas holidays just like I had to do this summer. At least now, with my Delta SkyMiles Silver Medallion Status, I have a slightly higher probability of doing the readings from the first-class cabin.

Following this post is my revised timeline and completion status of CFA Level II readings.

I’ve always heard “All good things must come to an end”. If by “good things” we mean “easy-to-read material without the need to break-out the trust TI BA II Plus calculator”, then by all means nothing could be more on-point. As predicted, I was able to speed-through the Session #2 Ethics Case reading in one evening last week. I've since spent the last week, after finishing Session #2 early, relaxing and doing homework for my Quant Finance classes at Georgia Tech.

The next two week will be spent reading Session #3 on Quantitative Methods. This particular session looks like it’s going to be a bear, so I’m going to make sure I make note-cards as I go along.

Here’s my updated CFA Level II progress and study plan:

CFA Level II – Week #1 | Ethics, Soft Dollar Standards, and Research Objectivity
Days Remaining until Exam: 265

It’s been an interesting first week to be back studying the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute (CFAI) level II curriculum. It’s been about 3 whole months since I had last cracked open a CFAI book, and I have to say – it feels good to be getting back into the swing of things since this time I’ll have 8 whole months to prep instead of just 18 weeks like I had with Level I. I’m starting early on Level II because the content has been rumored to be more difficult. Additionally, an early head start will make it much easier to learn at a more manageable / less hectic pace while simultaneously balancing the responsibilities of life, working full-time, traveling, and completing my Quantitative & Computational Finance (Financial Engineering) courses this semester.

This week, thanks in-part to the Labor Day holiday on Monday, allowed me to speed through 250 pages of Ethics reading in Volume 1 of the 2012 CFAI curriculum. The first two sections, Code of Ethics and Professional Standards, was a good refresher from Level I without too much cognitive effort to understand and apply. The third section, CFA Institute Soft Dollar Standards, was a bit more difficult to fully comprehend and understand given the verbose and highly technical and detail orientated nature of the subject matter. I can tell that this particular section is going to warrant some additional concentrated study time on my part to fully master. Thanks to my friends at Allen Resources (http://www.allenresources.com) I have the help of some instructional MP3s and plenty of extra practice questions via the QuizBank to help in my mastery of this particular material. The fourth section, CFA Research Objectivity Standards, was along the same lines and format of Section 3, but in my opinion it was a bit easier to understand and comprehend.

In summary, it’s good to be back in the saddle again reading for the June 2012 CFA exam! It’s unquestionably no easy task to start out reading 250 pages in the first week, but the mere 50 pages of next week’s session should make it a breeze in comparison.

Study Plan for this Week: Read Session #2 – Ethical and Professional Standards (Application).

Note: Since Session #2 is just ~50 pages of easy reading, I might try and get it knocked out this evening so that I can spend the rest of my week this week relaxing and catching up on Stochastic Processes for Finance (and the associated differential equations).

CFA Institute just released the 2012 curriculum and study materials! Since we're going to be looking at these things for the next 8 months - we figured that we might as well try to nail-down the locations featured.

Volume 1) Frankfurt
Volume 2) Hong Kong
Volume 3) London
Volume 4) Mumbai
Volume 5) Shanghai
Volume 6) Sydney

With the 2012 CFA Level II only about 8 months away, I’m already thinking about how to approach the daunting volumes of study material. While the kick-off of the 8 months journey is still 1-2 weeks away for me, I’ve already figured out my study schedule: