Up to Study Session 11

10 of 18 (and half of the 11th) are down, I have 7 and a half more study sessions to go. I haven't posted in a while, and I don't regret that at all because I'm pretty sure nobody has seen this page yet. Still, I don't care, I didn't do this for others, I did this as a way to gather my thoughts as I went through this mess.

I have found that the material is not striking me as quantitatively focused as the CFA level 1 was. I mean there's math all over the place, but there aren't any amortization tables to draw, or interest vs. principal to split up, the whole thing seems more all encompassing and big-pictureish (just my opinion though). I'm satisfied with my ability to understand concepts and feel confident right now, but tomorrow I may be sweating and feeling anxious, and the day after, who knows.

I am spending more time than I did a month ago. The gym's been suffering, I haven't seen my best friend in 2 months, and I'm fine with that because in just over 2 months I'll get my social life primed up again. I've been neglecting my girlfriend a lot, and she's been very supportive actually. She's pretty hot so I'm surprised she's stuck around through all this neglect and borderline dismissiveness, but knowing she's there comforts me, likewise my family.

Anyway, life issues aside, I've noticed some redundancies between the equities material and some of the material that came up back in business school. Every business school seems to have a hard on for Michael Porter and his 5 stupid forces, and apparently the CFA is no different. the 5 forces have come up in two separate readings in Study Session 11, so maybe that means something... maybe it means nothing. Either way, that's not a concept I'm worried about.

So far, I can't really think of one section that's given me more trouble than another. I suppose study session 7 was weird because not many new concepts were introduced, in my opinion. It was heavy on ratio analysis and application of the ratios that were learned in level 1, but in a case study context. Memorizing the ratios (again) and doing the very few problems from the Stalla question bank is going to be my approach for it. I don't see it as something I'll spend a lot of time on, relative to something like equities, quant, or fixed income.

The rest of financial accounting just made sense. It made a lot of sense, and I found it easier than the later readings of level 1 (all the shit with the deferred tax assets/liabilities calculations got pretty messy) and also the leasing stuff and principal/interest stuff got messy too. Goodwill impairment is something that could get tricky since there are a couple different types now, (partial and full goodwill). IFRS and GAAP had different takes on how they should be used, and I can't for the life of me remember exactly how those treatments differed, and any attempt at making formulas for the two right now would be a wild guess... It's been a while since I looked at that stuff and I should probably have a refresher on previous readings that aren't so fresh in my mind any more.

I'm on target to finish studying everything with about 3 or 4 weeks remaining before the exam date. I've booked 2 weeks off work before the exam and plan on putting in no less than 120 hours of study time in that 2 week period.

I don't have much else to say, so I think I'll end the post here. If you read this, thanks.