I’m tearing my hair out over GIPS. This reading goes on and on and on. I’ve been reading it in the mornings before work for what feels like 2 weeks. Then there’s 50 odd EOC’s and a plethora of calculation questions (TVPI, modified Dietz, etc.). Not that they’re overly difficult, but I spent zero time on GIPS calculations because I didn’t see “calculate” in any of the LOS’s.
Anyone else punt these calculations or should I suck it up and learn them? There’s enough other material in this section to fill an entire AM exam. 100 pages of pure text. Blah.
For GIPS I studied only 2 calculations: 1) time-weighted return and Dietz; 2) composite return using 3 different methods.
I think that GIPS isn’t about memorization of every detail in the text, it’s about “feeling” what is in complaint and what is not. I used two approaches to study GIPS:
focus on 2010 version of GIPS only and pay less attention to the previous versions of GIPS. Actually, I ignore all details before 2010.
find and print REAL GIPS-compliant reports of investment firms. I found several real GIPS-factsheets and just worked with them. It’s better to see and understand the structure of real docs than reading tons of text.
Thanks, that’s a good idea -I will check out some actual GIPS reports. I’ve also borderline ignored pre-2010 rules but you just never know if they’ll sneak one in. I’m going to keep drilling this in my head in the mornings because I think it’s a good place to pick up points on the field. But it’s excruciatingly painful.
Still not sure on the calculations given its not in the LOS. TWR/MWR are simple enough but the others I honestly didn’t even look at them to determine their difficulty. Maybe back to the drawing board.
I spent - similarly to you - a few weeks of reading the text on mornings for 20 minutes per day and when finishing I could solve cca 5% of the EOC.
Then I gave up this topic for good.
I had a similar problem with Ethics back at level I, because I don’t have that “feel” for these kind of obscure (sorry) topics.
So probably one whole item set lost on the PM session, but I’m just not able to get a grip on this. Maybe next year…I’m gonna start with GIPS from the first day of study.
Maybe next year in June you’ll be laying on a beach drinking mojitos, never having to worry about the cfa exam again. Let’s not mail this in just yet!! Plenty of time to learn this.