I just finished my CFA level 3 exam and I am in engineering. I am thinking how much of the material are actually being used in reality and ibanking. Any thoughts?
I don't know how to apply my knowledge to help me to do personal investing, e.g. I probably wont calculate beta before buying a stock and as a average investor, you wont have access to most historical data anyway. And seems like the whole class is just suggesting you to buy index and you can't beat the market most of the time with active management. Apart from making your resume nicer, how do you think this exam can help you?
Also, it seems like estimating all those parameters with high and low values will give you a ridiculous range of final values which help you nothing. E.g. The high estimate of this stock is 1000 dollars and low is 50 dollars. Do you buy now???
And how do you actually find out r and g in reality with reasonable accuracy??
I am not any way better at picking stock than before taking the exam i really want to learn something practical.
The short answer is yes, if you're working in Asset management or PE/IB in US. But for the personal investment, because the knowledge system of CFA does NOT cover Technical Analysis or Trading Strategy, so it's quite limited.
To be honest, 80% of level 3 is useless, at least for my daily job.
As to ethics, guys, don't think US is paradise. Stricter regulation is true, but definitely still lots of insider information and rumors on the street everyday.
The criteria is: Don't abuse it.
Well, I work for a fundamental oriented fund not a quant shop, so those trading strategies such as VWAP, implementation shortfall are totally bullshit to us. Maybe useful for algorithm trading shops, i have no idea then.
Level 1 and part of level 2 are definitely helpful, but just very basic knowledge. You can not rely on CFA stuff to be a great investor.