I’m about 40% of the way through the CFAI readings (Behavioral Finance, Alt Invest., Private Wealth Management, and Capital Market Expectations). Im about half way through Institutional Investor. I calculated out the time I’ve spent reading CFAI and the remaining pages…I will not have time to read every page of the CFAI books and do mocks/practice tests.
I ordered Kaplan Books today. My questions:
- Thoughts on which topics are best supplemented with Kaplan…and which ones really require a CFAI text book reading?
- What are the hardest and easiest topics of L3? Mark Meldrum broke them out by Easy, Medium, Hard for L1 and L2…haven’t found this for L3 so I’m curious…
I’d suggest doing as much as you can from curriculum. Use kaplan for smaller subjects like performance evaluation, trading, gips
With all due respect, in my considered opinion relying on any third party prep provider is progressively bad idea as one graduates from Level I to III. Not only the competition intensify but also no prep provider can cover all details of the CFAI and yet be concise.
But if one really has to make a choice I would suggest then go with the purists e.g. Nathan Ronen’s Chalk n Board or IFT. They directly teach from the curriculum and hence you could be reasonably assured that none is left out and yet you will save on time. I have NOT taken help from either.
I am not saying that what worked for me, will work for everyone, and if someone can study the detailed curriculum, good for them.
But I personally have not used the curriculum for any level. In L2 and L3, however, I solved the end of chapter questions in the curriculum, and studied the BB examples, but ONLY those that Mark presented in his videos, not all BBs.
Short answer: If you are crunched for time, I’d recommend MM videos, for about ANY reading in L3. This was my ONLY source for studying. But you need to “study” them and not just watch them.
As for the most difficult part of L3, I really think this will depend on you. However, most people say FI is (i beg to differ). I dug up this video for you, MM sort of talks about the difficulty of different areas of L3.
Starts @ 4:12
