Maddin

Cinderella Wrote:
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> Im not sure what materials you're using but the
> Eleventh Hour Guide has been a HUGE help for me
> this time. I failed Band 10 in Dec and my problems
> were that I didnt cover fixed income well at all
> then and faced retention issues too.
>
> FYI: Elan's free trial gives you access to free
> Quant vids and readings (8-11) if you're
> interested.


Since you mention FI specifically I'm going to use that as my critique. Am I the only one that thinks the 11th hour guide skips over a lot of useful material? It has basically 4 lines on duration and the practice questions i'm using in Stalla are covered with all kinds of duration problems. I find the 11th hour guide just reviews a lot of core topics, the stuff which if you don't even know that (e.g. bond prices fall when interest rates rise) you're basically screwed!

Bulla564

It's meant to be for last minute revision and I feel it does a great job of bringing everything together. I used the secret sauce last year which was barely over 200 pages. The 11th Hour has like 300+ so its way more detailed and it covers a lot more stuff.

I haven't used Stalla's practice questions but I felt that the QBank had way too many quantitative problems. It basically asks the same type of question multiple times. You barely needed the calculator on the actual exam. If you know your concepts you should be fine.

spreads Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Cinderella Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Im not sure what materials you're using but the
> > Eleventh Hour Guide has been a HUGE help for me
> > this time. I failed Band 10 in Dec and my
> problems
> > were that I didnt cover fixed income well at
> all
> > then and faced retention issues too.
> >
> > FYI: Elan's free trial gives you access to free
> > Quant vids and readings (8-11) if you're
> > interested.
>
>
> Since you mention FI specifically I'm going to use
> that as my critique. Am I the only one that
> thinks the 11th hour guide skips over a lot of
> useful material? It has basically 4 lines on
> duration and the practice questions i'm using in
> Stalla are covered with all kinds of duration
> problems. I find the 11th hour guide just reviews
> a lot of core topics, the stuff which if you don't
> even know that (e.g. bond prices fall when
> interest rates rise) you're basically screwed!

ogoluwa

spreads Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Since you mention FI specifically I'm going to use
> that as my critique. Am I the only one that
> thinks the 11th hour guide skips over a lot of
> useful material? It has basically 4 lines on
> duration and the practice questions i'm using in
> Stalla are covered with all kinds of duration
> problems. I find the 11th hour guide just reviews
> a lot of core topics, the stuff which if you don't
> even know that (e.g. bond prices fall when
> interest rates rise) you're basically screwed!


I think even the Elan study material skips a lot of important material. Only time will tell if what I think is important is actually important or not.

rgonzalez

As with any test, the key to retaining the material is practice. There are only a handful of concepts on this test that you need to memorize. I know it's obvious, but its true - it will come a lot easier if you understand what you are doing rather than memorizing a formula. This helps with speed on test day too.

The only way you can get this is to keep doing questions, in my opinion. I took Level I in December - using Stalla. Went through the lectures and the readings once, then kept hammering away at questions. When I hit topics that I couldn't grasp, I'd revisit the readings then try the questions again. It came a lot easier after that.

An example - Forward Rate Agreements. Don't memorize the formula, it won't help you. Understand the timing of each cash flow, and understand how to present value the results you get. The only way to understand this is to do a bunch of different questions, then re-read the text, then do more questions.

FVPV

Not yet. My greatest concern is if my studying strategy will payoff on June 4th. I'm very confident, but you never know until you write it.