Is there any value in reading any part of the curriculum from either the CIPM, CAIA or CFP for an individual investor. I wouldn’t have an interest in pursuing any of the designations but only picking certain topics and reading them for myself if there is any value in terms of analyzing a company, picking a fund manager, personal finance & real estate investing (private and public)
Thanks.
i dont know about those certification programs, but maybe you will find value in the last 2 chapters of a random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel. it gives some advice on investing and picking stocks.
Education is always rewarded, however, the first difficulty of reading about those programs is how to get those books. Perhaps buying on amazon?
If you are gonna invest in some books, better get other sources like our fellow candidate posted above.
For 3 years have gotten finance books from libraries instead of getting L3 cleared. Not regrets, tho.
Btw, once you are CFA Charterholder, you can skip CIPM L1 and jump directly to L2 and obtain that additional certification if you want. It is quite specialized indeed, mainly about performance attribution and performance evaluation. I have only 1 friend that works on this.
My take: These other designations are pretty specialized. So if you fancy yourself going down a particular path, I suppose they couldn’t hurt, but otherwise they seem too niche if you just want to appeal to the masses. CAIA will get you a job at a Fund of Funds…great. Honestly couldn’t tell you what the CIPM does and I don’t know a single person who has that designation.
The only, possibly, worthwhile designation is the CFP. Granted it’s much more popular in the wealth management world, but the pass rates are significantly higher than those of the CFA exams. So, again, in my opinion, if you already have the CFA Charter, why load up on others, especially if they’re easier to pass and potentially over-specialized?
CAIA Pass Rates: https://www.schweser.com/caia/blog/become-a-chartered-alternative-investment-analyst/how-hard-is-the-caia-exam
CIPM Pass Rates: https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/about/press-releases/2019/pass-rate-for-2019-cfa-institute-cipm-final-exam-is-54-percent
CFP Pass Rates: https://www.cfp.net/news-events/research-facts-figures/cfp-examination-statistics
(read top or highly cited papers related to topics which you are interested in) >> (CIPM + CFP + CFP + CFA + FRM + Whatever) for just getting knowledge and value added when analyzing and designing investment decision. All certificates exists to be on your name card. That’s all.
There was one Asian instructor ( can’t remember his name ,Dr. Wu or Wong) at Kaplan, who teaches CFP. The guy is a pHD and has 16 alphabet soup to his credit. Obviously, he had picked up a fancy of collecting certificates.
Gardening is a better hobby than appending often useless designation