CFA?

Quote from toc:

'would seem like a great hedge against a future trading blowout or something of that nature.'

Excellent comment, there are many boutique firms which will pay you to be on the team if you have a CFA. It is not joke to get CFA, talk about comprehensive testing of Level 3. For me it would not be 250 hours but 1500 hours of study if I can hope to pass it.
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I can certainly relate to that!


I have a friend who does risk analysis for an insurance company. He makes a great living, and through him I learned of the CFA. He told me if he could do it all over again he would not have pursued his Masters, rather spent the time on the CFA. He's not a trader, but it was his opinion the CFA to him would have been more worth it, then what was achieved through the continued pursuit of higher education.

I guess at least you can breath a sigh of a relief once you have earned that cert.. you can probably rest assured you will never be homeless.
 
Quote from toc:

For me it would not be 250 hours but 1500 hours of study if I can hope to pass it.
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I think half that would be enough.

Does one have to have a "bachelor’s degree or equivalent" aside
from passing all 3 level from and 4 years experiance to become carter holder?

Let say you don't have MBA, can you become a charter holder?



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Some facts about CFA institue:

Individuals: Nearly 80,000 investment professionals in 125 countries, including the world’s 67,000 CFA charterholders

• 85% are charterholders; 15% are non-charterholders • Approximately 63% serve institutional investors; 37% primarily serve individual investors • 49% are in-house financial analysts and portfolio managers at investment and mutual fund companies, banks, insurance companies and other buy-side firms • 18% are sell-side analysts, investment bankers and broker-dealers • 12% are investment advisers • 14% are academics, regulators, accountants, etc. • 7% are consultants


CFA candidates enrolled for June 2005 exams: More than 77,000 in 141 countries or territories

CFA candidates enrolled for December 2005 exam: More than 31,000 in 134 countries or territories

Average number of years candidates take to earn the CFA charter: 4+ years
 
You don't need an MBA to get a charter - just need a University degree to enroll in the program (or equivalent work experience, whatever that means). Just wrote the level 3 in Montreal. The place sure was packed on all levels and there were a lot of level 3 candidates too (I'd say 300+). I sure hope this was the last time I had to go through the gruelling process.
 
I just took the CFA yesterday

If I were looking to hire a trader, I would look highly upon a player with the CFA license.

Not because of the body of knowledge (it really has nothing to do with short term trading), but because of the fact that this player was disciplined enough to do self-study in excess of 100 hours.
 
Quote from Hybone:



Now that I am done with my Master level degree program and with the time commitment of bettering myself to be a trader, I am not going to sit for the CFA anytime soon. Earning the CFA is no guarantee of any financial security or success as it has becoming a little bit commoditized with many other countries spitting out candidates left and right. Plus, analysts positions may even be offshored one day and your CFA may not mean a whole lot, other than what you've learned.
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you say that as if they're not chucking out a bunch of mba's overseas too..?
 
'Not because of the body of knowledge (it really has nothing to do with short term trading), but because of the fact that this player was disciplined enough to do self-study in excess of 100 hours.'

This is wrong logic, trading is a totally different game. Studying has a lot to do with motivation.
 
Quote from roscko:
Some say you don't need it and others swear by it... My question is to the ones that at least passed level 1, did it help you in your career? Which exam prep do you recommend?
Cheers
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I'm a sell-side analyst covering a sector of the equity market every day. I certainly don't need a CFA for this and it's a lot of hard work to get one (I did start it once but then my job heated up and I ended up with no time to complete it). On the other hand there's a lot of methodology and information that I learned on the job that is in the CFA syllabus, so if you were a newcomer entering the industry a CFA would be a good way of getting up to speed.

For trading I would think would mostly be irrelevant, well, good background knowledge perhaps. Nice to have if you can afford the time (and money).

However, for a career on the buy-side a CFA is very useful. That's mostly why sell-side guys take the CFA, so that they can move to the buy-side if they want to.

Susukino
 
Things to bear in mind is that as a CFA you can no longer:

1) Engage in any kind of "moral turpitude".

2) Engineer a mass defection to another employer i.e. take your team. Mass layoffs/firings by employers are just fine.
 
Let's say they revoke you from your charter designation for some "unjust" or "Minor" ethic reasons, jesus :confused: should it matter when your new employer knows you already passed all three levels?

Looking at job boards, I assumption is there isn't much differance between passing Level III CFA candidate and a charter holder
 
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