what are the benefits of being a CFA charterholder?

[andytrader]

The goal in life should be as many letters after your name as possible. Then employers will know how little work you have accomplished relative to focusing on books. I’ve seen Mr xxxxxx, MBA, CFA, CMT, CAIA and it looks ridiculous.

[former_trader]

@darthplow

@Greenman72

After you get your CFA, you can claim that your investment skills are superior to those without the CFA.

I assume you failed ethics on level 2 and 1?

And you failed at sarcasm 101?

[Nick007]

the CFA can GUARANTEE the following:

about $3000 in cost

about 1,000 to 1,400 hours of ‘lost’ time

immense stress

sense of accomplishment when you make it.

other than that, it does NOT guarantee

a better job, more money, a faster car, hotter gf or a better life.

[wangta01]

@Nick007

the CFA can GUARANTEE the following:

about $3000 in cost

about 1,000 to 1,400 hours of ‘lost’ time

immense stress

sense of accomplishment when you make it.

other than that, it does NOT guarantee

a better job, more money, a faster car, hotter gf or a better life.

Yeah…I sometimes think about the hours I spent reading CFA materials. Man. I wonder what else I would of done? One things for sure - I really really enjoy Memorial Day weekends now, more so than ever before.

Funny you mention woman…I’ve heard multiple woman here in LA say about a new guy they are dating “And he’s really smart - he’s a CFA!”. Obvoiusly that’s a good connotation…

[GorillaNerd]

haha nice. I majored in sarcasm.

[bchad]

Cat Fancier?

[vicky_cool400]

HOPE

[Kravnos007CFA]

cfa charter is an ego boost just like a PHD.

Three words.

“Useless but neccessary”

[Flintheart_Glomgold]

LvL2 gave me a social disease

[kikentai]

It’s a real crowd pleaser at parties.

[haebooty]

Qo

[GorillaNerd]

fair enough. But why get a PHD when you dont even make more than an mba.

[Robotech]

haebooty, whopper of a first post.

[lxwarr30]

@JBrowntown

haebooty, whopper of a first post.

this guy will fit right in here.

[I_am_the_Highway]

@haebooty

You are an idiot and have no idea what you are talking about. I have a phd from the University of Michigan, in addition my wife, friends, family members and collegues have them in Economics as well as the hard sciences from other top programs (Caltech, MIT, University of California, Oxford, etc.) and the two processes are not even remotely comparable, any statement otherwise shows your complete ignorance on the topic as to what it takes to graduate with a phd from a respectible program.

At my wife’s work in her department of the US Treasury, no one has failed any of the CFA exams and for the first test most rarely study beyond 30 hours or so. While the later two require more preporation and study, the first one is trivial if you have half a brain and any sort of work experience or education.

Your statement about most people finishing once in a phd program is also patently false as large numbers of people are weeded out and fail to graduate with the degree they orignially enrolled to pursue. This however, might not be true at lower tier universities where, not to sound pretentious, but, getting a phd from is largely valueless. The value of a phd is highly contigent on many factors including school, department, adviser, resulting publications, etc., unlike the CFA which is uniform. Even within a single university degrees might be highly valueable in department and not in another.

While on the topic of education, some previous posts mentioned MBAs. Having taken MBA courses and being knowledgeable of the programs, most MBAs are trivial degrees to obtain even in top programs much less others; they are usually composed of dumbed downed verisons of more rigorous courses in other departments and their value stems from social connections developed while in them. I do not say all are trivial since certainly some tracks in some programs are rigorous and represent a significant achievement to obtain, but these are certainly a small minority. The most difficult thing about most programs is getting accepted and once in simply require time, money, and an ability to tolerate the most obnoxious people you will ever meet as classmates.

[editted to include the quote]

good thing I wrote about the lack of humility among PhDs in another thread already

[Vandelay_Industries]

@haebooty

@Nightmare55

@bchad

@Nightmare55

I am difinetley talking about a Phd in finance. I saw my friend taking it in 3.5 years and how smoothly it went without even half of the stress encountred with level 2 exam.

I raised this point here because alot is comparing CFA to MBA which I found it overly unfair.

So again, as for a Finance Phd, and talking mainly about Obtainability, CFA is harder to obtain. A finance Phd guy researching one topic under the supervision of a professor will not fail in most cases. While charterholders, many of them, fail level 2 and three quite often and some of them faild level 1 even before they earn the charter.

A question: what would you say when some charterholders spent about 6 years to obtain it?

The CFA does not require you to do original research (if anything, original thought hurts you on the exam, it’s designed to be about performing rote types of analyses commonly performed by investment analysts and portfolio managers). One of the reasons Ph.D. folk sometimes have difficulty on the CFA exam is that they know enough that they can talk themselves out of the correct answer because of additional knowedge that they obtained in their studies (experienced analysts also have this problem sometimes). Overthinking also interferes with time management, so in some ways it helps to be newer to the material, because you don’t have so many alternative ways of looking at things.

The hard part of a Ph.D. program is creating, defining, and testing new knowledge in the field. That’s defniitely harder than doing the CFA exam, hands down.

Getting a dissertation defense committee to actually read your stuff and agree to meet on a common day at a common time is also harder than CFA prep.

A Ph.D. finance student is usually finished with all the kinds of knowledge in the CFA program by the time he or she takes their comprehensive examinations (sometimes an oral examination as well). That’s usually at the end of 2 years or possibly 3. The material is frequently more in-depth than the stuff on the CFA exam, certainly the quantitative stuff tends to be. It may not cover some of the things like ethics or investor policy statements.

The CFA is designed to be done while you are holding down a job. That means that you have to find free time to study, which is difficlut, but you are not usually a poor student while you are doing it.

They are both difficult processes, but to say “the CFA is harder because you do it in 3 years instead of 6” is just amazingly bad analysis.

Starting with your last sentence which appeared to be quoting me. Well, I didn’t say this or implied so. I was simply saying that Obtaining the CFA charter is more difficult since you may fail even if you crammed like hell unlike Phds who don’t usually fail.

I know what Phd guys do. And what you said regarding that they go through all CFA materials with more depth is completely nonsense and inaccurate, unless you are talking about very few universities in the world which should be consiedered outliers. I don’t know any Phd program that requires you to master 16 or 17 books.

In addition, Phd guys have main focus is on their thesis not on each and every investment tool as in the CFA charterholder. I know people who received their Phds without reading one word about derivatives or fixed income yet they are called now Doctors.

Moreover, the level of stress that you encounter during you CFA studies is more likely to add to its difficulty which we don’t see it with most of Phd guys who’ve got enough time to make their research.

Finally, that was my point of view and you have yours.

You are an idiot and have no idea what you are talking about. I have a phd from the University of Michigan, in addition my wife, friends, family members and collegues have them in Economics as well as the hard sciences from other top programs (Caltech, MIT, University of California, Oxford, etc.) and the two processes are not even remotely comparable, any statement otherwise shows your complete ignorance on the topic as to what it takes to graduate with a phd from a respectible program.

At my wife’s work in her department of the US Treasury, no one has failed any of the CFA exams and for the first test most rarely study beyond 30 hours or so. While the later two require more preporation and study, the first one is trivial if you have half a brain and any sort of work experience or education.

Your statement about most people finishing once in a phd program is also patently false as large numbers of people are weeded out and fail to graduate with the degree they orignially enrolled to pursue. This however, might not be true at lower tier universities where, not to sound pretentious, but, getting a phd from is largely valueless. The value of a phd is highly contigent on many factors including school, department, adviser, resulting publications, etc., unlike the CFA which is uniform. Even within a single university degrees might be highly valueable in department and not in another.

While on the topic of education, some previous posts mentioned MBAs. Having taken MBA courses and being knowledgeable of the programs, most MBAs are trivial degrees to obtain even in top programs much less others; they are usually composed of dumbed downed verisons of more rigorous courses in other departments and their value stems from social connections developed while in them. I do not say all are trivial since certainly some tracks in some programs are rigorous and represent a significant achievement to obtain, but these are certainly a small minority. The most difficult thing about most programs is getting accepted and once in simply require time, money, and an ability to tolerate the most obnoxious people you will ever meet as classmates.

[editted to include the quote]

wow

[calvol]

There’s no 6 hours of intensity in a PhD program that’s comparable to the CFA exam. That said, most PhD candidates have to pass a qualifying exam based on the first year’s academic work of graduate courses. A hard exam, but the material has already been tested in the first year, and the format is much more relaxed-- maybe 5-10 theoretical problems, instead of 120 MC questions competing against the World.

Once the PhD candidate is in 2nd year, then all he has to do to graduate is become a slave to his advisor, and work on his disertation-- some people take up to 10 years to do this! Much more relaxed than cramming 3-6 months for a one-shot deal taking the CFA exam.

So, yeah, the CFA is much more intense and stressful than a PhD, and is broader, but not necessarily harder, and commands probably just as much investment in time as a PhD.

[former_trader]

^ Only someone that has both the PHD and the Charter can answer this question. The rest are just whistling in the dark.

[bchad]

Seems to me that even with a Ph.D. in Economics, 30 hours is cutting study time a bit short. Most economists are familiar with discounted cash flows, but they aren’t familiar with all the accounting stuff, nor is the ethics section covered in most economics degrees, plus there are a ton of niggling wacky almost-random details that can come up in L1 and throw you off track, and just figuring out what parts of the CBOK are likley to be tested and which parts are less crucial is a task that can take many hours. Plus, a practice exam is 6 hours long, so if you do two practice exams to figure out how they ask things in the format, you’ve used up already 1/3 of the study hours.

I’m not saying that Ph.D.s in this topic have to study all 300 hours, but I think that 4 days of full time studying seems a bit thin to guarantee a pass, or even make it a likely outcome.

As for the comprehensive exams, mine were similar in intensity and stress to the CFA exam and had both written and oral parts. They took about 2x the effort to prepare for compared to a single exam. The format was not the same, however, which makes an apples to apples comparison difficult. On the one hand, the CFA exam does ask you to do it three times in a row, and large numbers of test-takers fail, which is different from the doctoral comprehensive exams I saw (though remember, it’s easy to get accepted into the CFA program, it’s quite hard to get accepted into many doctoral ones). On the other hand, I didn’t have to go through the lonely dissertation process and approval to get my Charter.

Finally, I could probably subdue a T.Rex with the cylinder my Charter arrived in, which is a major plus. You get a really fine weapon when you get the Charter.

I think these thigns are different animals, with different purposes. The first is to turn you into a teacher and a developer of new knowledge bases. The other is to make sure you’re reasonably competent to apply a specific body of knowledge. In that sense (about application more than developing new knowledge) it’s more like an intense self-study master’s degree than a doctorate.

[system]

@haebooty

@Nightmare55

@bchad

@Nightmare55

I am difinetley talking about a Phd in finance. I saw my friend taking it in 3.5 years and how smoothly it went without even half of the stress encountred with level 2 exam.

I raised this point here because alot is comparing CFA to MBA which I found it overly unfair.

So again, as for a Finance Phd, and talking mainly about Obtainability, CFA is harder to obtain. A finance Phd guy researching one topic under the supervision of a professor will not fail in most cases. While charterholders, many of them, fail level 2 and three quite often and some of them faild level 1 even before they earn the charter.

A question: what would you say when some charterholders spent about 6 years to obtain it?

The CFA does not require you to do original research (if anything, original thought hurts you on the exam, it’s designed to be about performing rote types of analyses commonly performed by investment analysts and portfolio managers). One of the reasons Ph.D. folk sometimes have difficulty on the CFA exam is that they know enough that they can talk themselves out of the correct answer because of additional knowedge that they obtained in their studies (experienced analysts also have this problem sometimes). Overthinking also interferes with time management, so in some ways it helps to be newer to the material, because you don’t have so many alternative ways of looking at things.

The hard part of a Ph.D. program is creating, defining, and testing new knowledge in the field. That’s defniitely harder than doing the CFA exam, hands down.

Getting a dissertation defense committee to actually read your stuff and agree to meet on a common day at a common time is also harder than CFA prep.

A Ph.D. finance student is usually finished with all the kinds of knowledge in the CFA program by the time he or she takes their comprehensive examinations (sometimes an oral examination as well). That’s usually at the end of 2 years or possibly 3. The material is frequently more in-depth than the stuff on the CFA exam, certainly the quantitative stuff tends to be. It may not cover some of the things like ethics or investor policy statements.

The CFA is designed to be done while you are holding down a job. That means that you have to find free time to study, which is difficlut, but you are not usually a poor student while you are doing it.

They are both difficult processes, but to say “the CFA is harder because you do it in 3 years instead of 6” is just amazingly bad analysis.

Starting with your last sentence which appeared to be quoting me. Well, I didn’t say this or implied so. I was simply saying that Obtaining the CFA charter is more difficult since you may fail even if you crammed like hell unlike Phds who don’t usually fail.

I know what Phd guys do. And what you said regarding that they go through all CFA materials with more depth is completely nonsense and inaccurate, unless you are talking about very few universities in the world which should be consiedered outliers. I don’t know any Phd program that requires you to master 16 or 17 books.

In addition, Phd guys have main focus is on their thesis not on each and every investment tool as in the CFA charterholder. I know people who received their Phds without reading one word about derivatives or fixed income yet they are called now Doctors.

Moreover, the level of stress that you encounter during you CFA studies is more likely to add to its difficulty which we don’t see it with most of Phd guys who’ve got enough time to make their research.

Finally, that was my point of view and you have yours.

You are an idiot and have no idea what you are talking about. I have a phd from the University of Michigan, in addition my wife, friends, family members and collegues have them in Economics as well as the hard sciences from other top programs (Caltech, MIT, University of California, Oxford, etc.) and the two processes are not even remotely comparable, any statement otherwise shows your complete ignorance on the topic as to what it takes to graduate with a phd from a respectible program.

.

[editted to include the quote]

says the guy who cant spell.