CFA traders

[newwurldmn]

you had a masters in finance and a curriculum that’s the equivalent of a 1st year mba courseload ruined your trading?

i passed all three exams. Anyone who took it knew what it was and the value it brought and didn’t.

I have a Master of Science in Finance and took the 3 CFA levels. I had to unlearn it all to become profitable. Been trading full time for 16 years after unlearning and do not have to work again.

 

[Maverick2608]

you had a masters in finance and a curriculum that’s the equivalent of a 1st year mba courseload ruined your trading?

i passed all three exams. Anyone who took it knew what it was and the value it brought and didn’t.

My employer at the time encouraged everyone to take the CFA in order to advance. That was my motivation.

I did not say it ruined my trading. I said I had to unlearn what I learned at my Master in Science in Finance and the CFA curriculum.

This is not rocket science. According to academia and hence also the CFA curriculum which is based on academic finance, every short term trade has a negative expected return. According to the CFA curriculum Jim Simons has just been lucky. If you want to be a trader you have to unlearn it or find something else to do.

 

[newwurldmn]

My employer didn’t require it, but I took it because I wanted to expand my horizons. I have a masters in financial engineering (pricing derivatives). I found it to be helpful because it gave me another set of tools to create a wider view of finance.

No one I know took the EMH that seriously except for when it was useful to for the purposes of modelling.

maybe that was one of those things that impressed upon your mind deeper than it did me and you had to unlearn it. What was your previous job?

My employer at the time encouraged everyone to take the CFA in order to advance. That was my motivation.

I did not say it ruined my trading. I said I had to unlearn what I learned at my Master in Science in Finance and the CFA curriculum.

This is not rocket science. According to academia and hence also the CFA curriculum which is based on academic finance, every short term trade has a negative expected return. According to the CFA curriculum Jim Simons has just been lucky. If you want to be a trader you have to unlearn it or find something else to do.

 

[Ivano]

my CFA 1 friend lost 30%+ money in crypto strange names as pokemon or something, we spoke a bit about trading, he had no clue about nothing to be honest, he told me he bought the peak, and then was scared to go out, then he realized the loss, and exited

 

[TheDawn]

I have a Master of Science in Finance and took the 3 CFA levels. I had to unlearn it all to become profitable. Been trading full time for 16 years after unlearning and do not have to work again.

From what I know, the CFA designation is more for people pursuing portfolio management and not for trading individual securities at a time so the skill and the knowledge that you learn in that program might be a little different.

 

[Maverick2608]

From what I know, the CFA designation is more for people pursuing portfolio management and not for trading individual securities at a time so the skill and the knowledge that you learn in that program might be a little different.

That is correct.

However, the CFA program does not teach portfolio managers to beat the market. You are taught you cannot beat the market. You are taught ethics, economics, financial statement analysis etc., but not to beat the market - only to manage risk.

I see the CFA program as I see most educations particularly within social sciences. It is something employers use to hire employees and employees use to get hired. I invested sweat in this. Pick me. Nothing wrong with that. It is signaling and that has value.

 

[Scataphagos]

Somebody should start a "Trader Academy Online" or something like that.

 

[NeedToLearn]

I'm not sure why one would need to "unlearn" something from the CFA program. There isn't whole lot of short-term trading related knowledge you would gain from the program anyway. It's 'kind of' helpful for learning about fixed income, derivatives, fundamental analysis, and maybe some basic statistics. It's a good exercise for the brain, useful for employers who prefer them but not exactly useful for trading to be honest.

I personally think the behavioral finance and quantitative methods are worth studying, but the program barely scratches the surface in that area.

 

[Maverick2608]

I'm not sure why one would need to "unlearn" something from the CFA program. There isn't whole lot of short-term trading related knowledge you would gain from the program anyway. It's 'kind of' helpful for learning about fixed income, derivatives, fundamental analysis, and maybe some basic statistics. It's a good exercise for the brain, useful for employers who prefer them but not exactly useful for trading to be honest.

I personally think the behavioral finance and quantitative methods are worth studying, but the program barely scratches the surface in that area.

The foundation of the CFA program is the efficient market hypothesis. That obviously needs to be "unlearned" for trading to make any sense.

If I had adhered to the foundation of the CFA program, I would have worked as an employee for the last 16 years and I would most likely have earned a lot less. (That may look different in the future do to increasing power of computers.)

 

[JonLivingston]

Thanks all for contributing to this thread so far.

My main takeaway so far are:
- good if not better-than-nothing to do it for the learnings (even if only considered as a launchpad to other topics if one wants to go deeper)
- definitely a nice to have from an employment/career perspective

Then in the context of trading, anything goes

Glad to see my rationale for embarking on this journey was not nonsensical then (I'm doing it for the learning as well as the piece of paper that says "guy knows X, should be able to do Y and can legally do so because of Z").