Errata for 2011 Mocks

[tuse]

Does anyone have the errata for the 2011 CFAI Mock? I think there are
several mistakes in the answers they've provided.

[Sonal Thakor]

How has everyone been doing on their mocks? How did the Schweser live exam go for those who took it? We've only got 9 days left!!!!

[Shreyas Tonse]

Took the CFAI mock from last year and scored 73% 

Been doing slightly bettering the Schweser mocks. What about you? 

Sent from my iPhone

[Ben Jones]

Piss poor for me...60% on first two schweser.  Still haven't managed to get through my 1st review of material.  Kickin my ass

--

Ben Jones
5210 Milam St.

Dallas, TX 75206

(214) 600-9012

[Sonal Thakor]

Shreyas,

I surprised you're doing better on the CFAI mocks than Schweser. For me it's the other way around. I'm hitting 68-69% range on CFAI mocks. I just need to push this last week and hopefully I'll be good. 

[Shreyas Tonse]

Meant to say I've been doing slightly better on the Schweser mocks than the CFAI. The auto correct on the phone screwed it up.

I got hold of the errata for 2011, there are a few errors in there. That means your CFAI mock score could actually be a few percentage points better than you think. 

Sent from my iPhone

[Ben Jones]

So where are y'all getting multiple CFAI mocks? If you have other ones than the june '12, can you please share? thanks!

[Sonal Thakor]

I actually was reporting the score from the 2012 mock. . . I just took it this past weekend. Very complex FRA, it's something I need to focus on since they throw a lot of tricks in there. 

[Frank Jiang]

I hope I have time to review the second time. I'll do that if I have
two more weeks, or can take off from work. right now, i may have to
shift my focus on FRA and equity. cannot remember everything ...

[Laura Noonan]

My new exam technique is to paper every door in my apartment with post-its of formulas and questions I've gotten wrong so I can't avoid them...so far it's working surprisingly well, even if the place does look ridiculous 

[adam johnson]

That is awesome Laura. I like the strategy of attacking the problems that you have missed. I have taken all six Schweser exams and the 2010 and 2011 CFAI mocks, so I have plenty of missed problems to go over. I was feeling great about FRA until I took the 2011 CFAI mock. I also have some formulas I just need to sit down and memorize.

What other strategies are people using now that we have officially hit crunch time? Does anyone think there is a particular area where we can pick up some easy points? I have to go back and hit ethics hard. I fell into the trap of thinking this was the same as Level I. On the CFAI mocks, I have been terrible on ethics.

Adam

[Sonal Thakor]

Although this sounds counter intuitive, I think swaps/forwards/futures are easy points. There are difficult but once you get the calculations down, there's not much they're going to do to trick you. Unlike FRA!

[Shreyas Tonse]

Adam - how have you been doing on the Schweser mocks? And the CFAI 2011 one? I found the 2011 mock to be particularly difficult. Barely scraped past 70 on that one 

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[adam johnson]

I honestly was all over the map on the schweser exams. My range was 63-83. I have not done as well on the CFAI mocks. I got 62.5% on the 2011 one I took today. When I went back through it, I quickly realized I made some really dumb reading mistakes. I should have printed it out, but I tried to take it directly off my computer and I made some reading errors. Oh well, I have heard that 62% is the likely cutoff on the actual exam. I know everyone says shoot for 70, but I have heard it actually is more like a 62 on the actual exam. Have you guys heard the same?

[Laura Noonan]

If 62 was the cut off that'd be awesome! I'm well behind on the mocks, did the live Schweser at the weekend and crashed out at 56, have done one Schweser sample since then and got 68, I'd like to be in the mid 70s on Schweser before d-day, I'd say CFA proper is harder. 

[Shreyas Tonse]

Anybody done the 2011 CFAI Mock?

Q 36 on the PM asks you to calculate the cash flow (CFO) effects of pension accounting.

I thought the Cash Flow effect would be the after tax difference between the Employer Contribution & Economic Expense whereas  the answer takes the after tax difference b/w Employer Contribution & Pension Expense.

Is the former applicable to only GAAP while the latter one is for IAS? The question mentions that the firm reports as per IFRS.  

--
Shreyas Tonse

[Frank Jiang]

I didn't do it. You might have to back out cash flow like you do from
net income, add back non-cash charge, etc. Employer contribution is
cash expense but pension expense is not. See if you can derive the
formula.

[Ben]

Just finished 2011 cfai mock. 69% overall. AM did much better than PM. Gonna do my first look at ethics tomorrow and review deriv/pm for first time and hope to get it up to 75 by wed for the 12 mock. These tests are a freaking beating.

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[Laura Noonan]

Congrats, that's great, most people seem to do far worse on CFA than the Schweser. I've been putting off doing it in case it totally kills my confidence... 

[Sonal Thakor]

Ben, that's really good for not having gone through ethics and deriv/pm! I know 2011 mock had a lot of derivatives at the front . . .what tricks do you use to get through material you haven't even seen?

[Ben Jones]

Ethics Ive just been using what i learned at level 1 and ive been getting about half right, but who knows how much is luck.  I felt like the PM of the test had more derivatives, but maybe that was just the portion that i didnt really know. 

Only trick im using is any question I have absolutely no clue on, I stick with a "default" answer of B.  Not really sure how much it works.  If I can eliminate one answer, I'll do that first, then just pick one.  Not to confuse, but I have gone thru deriv/pm, just haven't reviewed.  Fortunately im taking off work this week to get thru all this crap.

[Sonal Thakor]

Oh ok, that makes sense to me now, I thought you said you hadn't gone through pm/deriv at all! Yea, ethics is a hard beast whether you go through the material or not. You've got to really know your stuff. 

[Frank Jiang]

Ben, that's very good score. I finished 2011 mock with overall 56.7%.
It's very hard. To make things worse, I can only take 6/1 Friday off.
:(

[Laura Noonan]

Am I the only one going mad at schweser's totally inconsistent definition of foreign and domestic currency? The books say if it's dollar per euro, then euro is the domestic, the exam answers take the opposite view sometimes, but not all the time. It is totally doing my head in, the more I look at it the more confused I get because it's always different. 

[Frank Jiang]

Domestic is base currency. Think about USD. It's the unit that is used
to quote foreign currency.

I am trying to ignore the formula. When I get a question, I'll think
about which currency has higher inflation, or interest rate and decide
which currency will appreciate. Then I decide what rate is put on
denominator and what goes to numerator. It seems work better for me.

[Bryon Gmail]

You may need to review concept of direct and indirect quote. It's all relative. Certain formula are in direct quote, certain are indirect. Depend on what quote is given on the exam, adjust the formula accordingly

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[Laura Noonan]

Thanks guys. Ive reviewed the material extensively but it's become a total blind spot. Just put it to a friend who's sitting L3 who said I'm totally over thinking it - domestic currency is the investor's home currency, end of. So that's my new rule of thumb for tonight anyway. 

Thanks

Laura 

[Frank Jiang]

Just did CFAI 2010 mock. I felt earlier exam is easier, I was able to
get AM 70% and PM 68.3%. One thing I noticed is that I am much
stronger with FSA part (except temporal and current rate translation
matrix).