It’s cool as long as you remember what you read right?
buzzed may be more appropriate… and it may be more appropriate to pose the question as: who else does it? and is it okay? and lastly, does it make me cool?
Funny you mention that. There’s a CFA ‘AA’ forum in the General CFA link.
And I am actually having a strange experience while studying ‘sober’ the past two days. I’m not as clear, nor am I retaining material as well as when I was studying buzzed or shittfaced. I’m hoping it’s just a transition period though for my mind and body.
I think it’s okay to too ‘drunk study’… and if you can remember stuff drunk, you should be able to remember it even better ‘sober’. For Level I, it definitely worked for me. For Level II, not so sure.
Like training in a deliberately harsher environment than reality, should in effect make you stronger and more adept for the real thing.
You can also try sitting in extremely uncomfortable positions while studying, or starve yourself for a few days while studying, or let your mind drift to sexual fantasy while studying. Or take the occasional internet porn break.
I might just do that now.
Trading drunk vs trading high
Who would win out?
Personally I don’t think you retain near as much even if it feels as if you do, because you tend to nod and move on at the big picture without focusing on details even with a single beer in you. I never mix the two. Feels like a giant fail. Several hours wasted drinking beers and reading, accomplishing neither a party, nor quality studying.
^Interesting take Swan.
FM, your trading question depends on what kind of ‘high’.
If you’re smoking herb, then trading is probably worse, but if you are on methamphetimines, or good cocaine, then I think you would trade better on an ‘intraday’ pattern, but not swing or position trading. And you’d have to be trading shit with a lot of volatility. And possibly use lots of leverage.
Back in the day, one of my colleagues was trading Bund/Bobl Spread completely drunk overnight european hours (so risk manager was not in building) my friend was Irish also, and he was up a good 20k in about 30 minutes… then he took off one of the legs on the spread, and started scalping, and got blown out down to minus 40k, and the risk manager called security to escort him out of the builidng and fired the guy.
Come to think of it, I’m going to google him and try to get in touch with him to see what he’s doing nowadays. That was back in 2003.
^ yup
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Feels like a giant fail. Several hours wasted drinking beers and reading, accomplishing neither a party, nor quality studying.
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depressing…
Not drunk. I put that in the title to gain some readership. But I will drink 1-3 beers or a bottle of wine while I burn through 30-40-50 pages at night. Anymore than that and I start to lose my retention. I’m sure it’s totally cool at that level. I guess I’m just wondering if other people do it? or am I just some half-ass burn out?
Are you a functional alcoholic? My opinion is that you’re fine if it’s just 1-3 beers or a bottle of wine.
I have 1-3 bottles of beer or almost a bottle of wine a few nights a week… probably not a functional alcoholic. I think of Don Draper as the functional alcoholic-- albeit probably the extreme.
ahh… I wish it was 1959
I study sober too sometimes. It’s just that at times, after long days of concentrating on all sorts of things, i find it hard to sit down and concentrate on the CFA books without a beer or a glass of wine. More of a winding down thing. Maybe it’s ADD ADHD. Anybody else have issues with adhd or add?
I have half a beer and I can’t read anything, not even a good book. My brain just doesn’t work that way.
Memorizing formulas and the steps to take on certain questions is appropriate for drunkedness. COGS FIFO = COGS LIFO - Change LIFO reserve… COGS/Average Inventory, etc… correlation = Cov ab/sigma a x sigma b… beta = CovAB/var B or pho(sigma a/sigma b) or f-s = act/360/(1+b)act/360 x [p-b] etc…
There’s some shitty apps on iphone that have some formulas that you could look at while drinking at bar for extra studying. Also secret sauce is small enough to bring into bar and not look like a dick.
Reading the qualitative stuff like econ and such, not so good to be drunk. I can’t even read it sober. the regulations and neoclassical bullsht… but once again the formulas can be done repetitively in your head whilst hammered. theta/1-alpha + dep+n (wait that’s only half of a formula), if I were drunk, I would remember it all.
philosophy…heh
One of my friends used to claim that he did better with a good shot of an energy drink sold (Ok its sold in India, but Ive no idea whether its an international drink) called “Red Bull”. He says you got to drink it fast and from the ingredients I can see a lot of caffiene!
I agree with BlackSwan here, I never try to mix both. I personally feel I dont do a quality of job of neither drinking nor studying 
there are lots of good drunk trading stories but hard to top this one http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/29/drunk-oil-trader-banned-fsa
There’s been some research about the state of mind when studying versus when recalling info.
If you’re studying hopped up on caffeine or adderall, you should be back or cafeine or addy when test day comes around. If you’re studying when you’re real tired, you can recall stuff better when a bit tired.
…so if you’re drinking when stdudying…
but seriously 1 or 2 beers is negligible. If you’re, drinking an entire bottle of wine, that’s stupid
oh, thats quite interesting actually… phew, would you have some links or some pointers on this please? Seriously interested in knowing more about this. thank you!
I sip wine everynight while i read financials while i have the kardashians playing on the tv…generally, you can’t be drunk and reading financial statement but you can think about the companies…
I can’t concentrate when I’m drunk. One time when I was in private equity I had come back from a raging happy hour and tried to read an investment memo. I felt like I was re-reading the same two pages for an hour without retaining anything, before ultimately passing out on my couch around 9-11pm (exact timing is unknown) and waking up the next morning while bathing in my own sweat because I had fallen asleep in my work clothes, with all the lights on, and with my blinds drawn open.
No coffee = work. beer/wine = play. I don’t believe in mixing the two. If your boss was Kim K, you’d never get any work done.
What is this “Red Bull” you speak of?