Well into study session 12

There are 58 days until the CFA exam. For any university midterm or final, with the number of study hours available in that time, especially with the limited other responsibilities I have, that would be an eternity. That's not the case here. I wouldn't say I'm "tripping balls" or "going ape shit crazy" but I realized it's coming; it's feeling less and less like some abstract goal for the future. Any candidates reading this, I suspect, are feeling the same way, even the douchebags going on the analyst forums and talking shit about how they already know everything, and how they're gonna (or already are) making bank at Goldman Sachs as an Analyst/Trader/Dickhead.

I flipped through the pages of the texts, and also opened up a couple of my notes at random to flip through those too. A lot of what I saw made me groan and say "Fuuuuck, I remember this kind of.... but how exactly did that go??? Was it... ugggh..." or "How did GAAP differ from IFRS on that one, and which was which?" or "what was that formula again?" and so on. I took a breath and told myself that I made a pretty thorough run through it, even though it was probably only fresh in my memory in chunks and for short bursts of time. I managed to grasp the stuff at some point, so come review time, it will hopefully come back to me quickly, and repetition should cement it.

The good news is that study sessions 10 and 11 (both equity) were surprisingly reminiscent of stuff that was in level 1. It described basic call and auction markets to start things off, then got into your standard valuation theories, with a couple new ones too that were no more complicated, in my opinion. At the tail end of 11, Dividend Growth Model and Gordon Growth Model came up again, and there was nothing in those readings that struck me as different from what I saw in level 1, aside from maybe something called the H model, (a type of GGM). CAPM, of course, came up on a few pages too. The new valuations, (that weren't in level 1) are Residual Income, and Free Cash Flows (both Equity and Debt), and possibly some other less significant ones that I'm forgetting about. None of them are brain busters, and don't get messy like the derivatives and even fixed income stuff did in level 1. They're just formulas that are pretty much plug and play. Overall, equity materials in this book are very understandable and not messy at all.

I think Derivatives and Fixed Income have the potential to be brain busters with messy math and awkward formulas, (Derivatives more than Fixed Income though). For now, I'm gonna try to finish Equities and also Alternative Investments (SS 13) by Saturday night so that I can have Sunday to go back and look at stuff I forgot from earlier. That, or I may just lay back, enjoy few shots of fine cuban rum, and then shoot myself in the face with a nicely sized shotgun. I'll play it by ear though.