I’ve read numerous posts on the board stating Ethics & FSA are the most important concepts to master. I’d like to concentrate on how to best study for Ethics in this thread. I can list off the Code of Ethics and the Standards of Professional Conduct without a problem, but I’m pretty sure application of those concepts is what will be tested. I have numerous examples of application in Schweser notes (and Qbank) and I read through those, so I feel like I’m on the right track, but can anyone provide any other pointers?
Read the standards of Practice Handbook. read it daily while you travel or … theres a PDF available on CFAI website or you can buy it . i bought one for 25 bucks … its quite compact and easy to carry . good luck with ethics 
CFA Practice Handbook is a must. Pay special attention to the examples given in it. Also, I studied Ethics last, the weekend before the exam so I could remember all the material well.
Great, I’ve downloaded the Ninth Edition Standards of Practice Handbook from the CFA Toolkit at cfainstitute.org. The 177 page pdf file. I’ll throw it on the pile. Thanks!
aquabu, how compact? The .pdf is about 180 pages and I have it saved to my desktop, but I don’t find it particularly easy to carry around the whole printout. I would certainly pay $25 for a version that is more like a paperback book or something. Is that what it is like?
CFAI Book is the only way to go. There is no shortcut…
where about can you find this printout on the CFAI website?
standards of practice handbook: http://www.cfainstitute.org/memresources/education/reading/levelone/ser_ss1.html before you run off to print that, keep in mind that it’s already included as the first study session in vol. 1 of your CFA curriculum
be sure to spend a few hours on the SOP book the day before the exam… that helped me a lot…
Just read it a couple of times in the CFAI book. Do a lot of Qbank and other questions. After a while, this section becomes easy. One thing I recommend though is to review the GIPS a couple of times. I didn’t really ever review this. I just knew several things from doing a lot of practice questions such as the minimum 5 year requirement of GIPS-compliant performance history, the various sections of the GIPS, and a few other things. On the exam they asked a couple of specific GIPS questions that you could only know if you read the full version. There was a question dealing with the valuation and treatment of real estate in a firm’s assets that flew over my head.
I agree with what most people here are saying. Don’t bother reading the Ethics stuff from Schweser–it is kind of garbage. Even the questions they ask you in qbank and practice exams are so wordy and ambiguous that they don’t really help you. I actually found myself getting confused. Just read CFAI text for this. Also, the day before the exam, re-read the entire ethics/GIPS material. I definitely got myself some easy points on the June exam, because there were questions that were verbatim from the text, and it was fresh in my mind from the day before.
As far as Standards of Practice Handbook is considered, is 9th edition the latest one? Never mind, I just looked it up and 9th edition is the latest. Also, thanks for the providing the WEB LINK to download the book @ CFAI.
I’ve read the Ethics part 3 times and will continue to take quizzes for that section from here on out so the material stays fresh. I also have the Schweser MP3’s which I have on my ipod and listen to them on the drive in to work.
ethics was so boring for me so I didn’t read the material at home…I read in the subway, at work (at my lunch breaks), at the park etc. then I solved questions from Qbank and mock exams…I started ethics after I completed all books…