Current progress and plans
I finally finished book 1, and there are three more books to go:
- Book 1: Quants, Economics and Corporate finance
- Book 2: Financial statement analysis (FSA) and Equity investments
- Book 3: Fixed income and derivatives
- Book 4: Portfolio management and Ethics
I have also registered for the CFA level 1 exam. The exam is scheduled for November 18th, 2025, which gives me around three and a half months to study the remaining material. Here's my plan:
- Book 2: complete in 3 weeks, that is by August 20th
- Book 3: complete in 3 weeks, that is by September 10th
- Book 4: complete in 3 weeks, that is by September 30th
After finishing the books, I’ll dedicate a full month to practice questions and mock exams, leaving me with a two-week buffer before the exam.
Impressions on the 1st book (Schweser notes)
I’d like to briefly share my impressions of the CFA curriculum up to this point.
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Quants: As expected, this section is math-heavy, but the concepts themselves aren’t overly difficult. That said, working through the formulas is crucial for truly understanding them. The real challenge lies in memorizing all the terms and equations.
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Economics: This part was less demanding, though some concepts—like interpreting complex graphs (e.g., marginal cost vs. demand curves) and models (e.g., the Cournot model and Nash equilibrium)—took me a while to grasp. Much of the Economics material is fact-based, but unfortunately, the Schweser notes don’t always explain things clearly. I often found myself supplementing with Google searches and LLM explanations to fill in the gaps.
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Corporate Finance: By far the easiest of the three. Most of the content is straightforward and fact-based, though again, some explanations in the material were unclear. Referring to external sources helped a lot here.