Financial exams | Charter school
June 8, 2008
Financial exams | Charter school | Economist.com
ON THE weekend of June 7th and 8th, up to 175,000 people round the world will face one of the most arduous tests of their lives. They will sit one of the three exams required to earn the coveted status of chartered financial analyst (CFA).
One of those candidates will become the millionth person to take the test. That is phenomenal growth for a qualification that, as recently as 1995, was taken by fewer than 20,000 people a year. This expansion partly reflects the lure of earning big money in finance (at least until the credit crisis). But it also shows the growing appeal of the CFA brand outside its American birthplace; more than two-fifths of this year’s candidates come from Asia, where job ads in the South China Morning Post now often say “CFA-required”.
Some of you may know that I plan to write the CFA exam (in the near future). I haven’t quite yet decided when and where to write it. Anyways, I wrote a longer commentary on my other blog.
Choosing a calculator: TI BA II Plus « Road to CFA
May 22, 2008
Choosing a calculator: TI BA II Plus « Road to CFA
Aside from the textbooks, there is one other item that you will get to know very intimately when studying for the CFA exams: your financial calculator. The CFA Institute lets you choose between two models: the Texas Instruments BA II Plus (or its Professional variant) and the Hewlett Packard 12C.
Unless you are already accustomed to the HP 12C, the de facto standard when it comes to financial calculators, most people will recommend the TI BA II Plus. I had the chance to try the HP 12C, on my iPhone no less (there’s an emulator available for download). The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t figure out how to use it! Adding or subtracting didn’t seem to work, nor did any other basic mathematical function. At first, I thought my iPhone was just acting up (crazy, I know) but I later found out that the HP uses something called the RPN (Reverse Polish notation). To add 1 and 2 together, you would type in “1 2 +” instead of “1 + 2″. It gets even more complicated when you have multiple operations. On top of that, it has a slower processor (HP opted not to make any changes since its first release in the early 80’s) and more expensive.
Read the rest here.
This is my other blog. I might post updates here once in a while.
