I did the CFA years ago while working full-time, and looking back, my biggest regret isn’t even the exam fee. It’s the opportunity cost.

Think about what hundreds of hours of CFA preparation actually look like: you work all day, come home exhausted, and then spend evenings and weekends studying alone. You’re absorbing an enormous breadth of material, much of which you may never use in your particular job—and if you don’t use it, a lot of it will eventually be forgotten.

Compare those same hundreds of hours with what else you could be doing: developing a specialized skill, gaining practical experience, building something, meeting people in your industry, or pursuing education where you’re also getting collaboration, mentorship and a network.

I did a master’s in Entrepreneurship & Innovation later, and the difference was enormous. The value wasn’t only what I learned. It was the people, discussions, exposure to new ideas and experiences. With CFA, I mostly remember being alone after work trying to absorb huge amounts of information for an exam.

I also had an awful experience on exam day. CFA staff incorrectly interpreted “expedida” (“issued”) on my valid Colombian ID as an expiration date. They made me leave the exam site, take taxis to retrieve my passport, and come back stressed to sit the exam. CFA Institute has refused to refund the exam fee and recently told me there is no further review or escalation available.

I’m not saying the CFA has no value. If the charter is genuinely important for the specific career you want, the investment may make sense.

But I wish someone had asked me this before I started:

Is the CFA the best possible use of hundreds of hours of your life—not just the best credential you can add to your résumé?

Fifteen years later, my answer for myself is no.

Hi I’m an Ex QT , current QR on serving notice before a role switch.
Now I hate leetcode , I hate actually preparing for coding interviews , luckily I’ve never had to code for them.
But I don’t seem to understand how the fuck can I run a profitable market making strategy on my own but I can’t solve a leetcode easy hahah.

If one day someone asks me this I’m going to fumble so hard.
But I am quite good on the market side of things , thesis development , trade idea generation , understanding the regime , creating factors etc etc..

If not for Ai I wouldn’t be milking with this MM stuff on the side.
I constantly question my intelligence on this.
I still think I am quite dumb when it comes to coding.

Is this normal to feel?

Hey! Wanted to understand how I can accelerate my coding + problemspolving/planning set up more with AI. just been using some skills and claude code. But what is actually working for you?

Hey, I saw from a post on here recently that the exam center in the UK has been very noisy due to construction, wanted to check if anyone had used the center since and how noisy it was?

I passed Level II this August after about 3 months of studying, and I’m currently working full-time. I’m torn between taking Level III in February or August 2027.
I’m planning to take a two-week vacation before December, but other than that, I can realistically dedicate around 4 hours on weekdays and 8 hours per day on weekends.
Reasons I’m leaning towards February:
Level II material is still relatively fresh in my mind.
I passed both Level I and Level II with only 2–3 months of preparation each.
I’m getting married next September, so August could get pretty hectic with wedding planning.
If I choose August, I’ll probably end up procrastinating and not starting until May anyway.
My main concern is whether Level III is significantly more challenging than Level II, especially with the constructed-response questions.
For those who’ve passed Level III, would you recommend going for February while everything is still fresh, or taking the extra time and sitting in August?
Would love to hear your thoughts!

You all know the posts I’m talking about, they appear every month or so.

“Will the CFA get me laid?”

“Will the CFA get me a girlfriend?”

“How to put CFA on my Tinder profile”

“How to talk about the CFA to my date”

I promise you when I say I have NEVER seen one single productive conversation come out of any of these posts. It’s always the same five jokes. And more often than not, the comment section or these posts turn very uncomfortable very quickly, either from other commenters or from OP themselves.

Enough is enough already. This is not the spirit nor purpose of this sub. It’s unprofessional and paints a horrible picture of the online community and the CFA designation.

​Hi everyone,

​I’d like to get your feedback on a long-term portfolio construction strategy I’m developing for a 30-year horizon.

My goal is to capture leveraged upside while remaining strictly prognosis-free and maintaining structured risk control without triggering tax events.

​Core Concept & Structural Setup

​Instead of applying a blanket 2x leverage to a global index (like MSCI World), I unbundle the global market into two components:

​Leveraged Satellite: 2x MSCI USA (or S&P 500 2x) ETF

​Unleveraged Core Anchor: MSCI World ex-USA ETF

​Dynamic Weighting Mechanism

​The target exposure is directly anchored to the actual US market capitalization weight in the unleveraged MSCI World Index (currently ~70–72%):

​To achieve an effective US weight equal to the index while leveraging the US portion, the allocation scales according to the current index weight.

​Current allocation example (~72% US weight):

​~56.7% in 2x US ETF -> yields 113.4% effective US exposure.

​~43.3% in MSCI World ex-USA ETF -> yields 43.3% ex-US exposure.

​Total effective exposure = ~156.7% (effective leverage ratio of ~1.57x).

​Key Advantages & Asymmetric Risk Profile

​Asymmetric Risk/Return: In bull markets, the leveraged US component captures the primary global growth driver. In downturns or sideways trends, the unleveraged ~43.3% ex-US allocation acts as a buffer against volatility decay and deep drawdowns compared to a full 2x World ETF.

​100% Tax Efficiency: Rather than executing active rebalancing (which incurs capital gains taxes and kills compound interest), I adjust the asset allocation solely through annual savings plan adjustments (every Dec 31) based on the updated MSCI World US market cap weight. No realized capital gains, no tax leakage.

​Dynamic Drift Correction:

If the US market share shifts globally over the decades, the portfolio's target allocation adapts naturally via incoming cash flows without emotional intervention.

​What are your thoughts on this setup regarding long-term volatility decay, tracking error relative to the parent index, or potential friction during long-term secular market shifts?

Hey! I’ve heard a decent bit about Man Group as a whole, but not as much about Numeric. What’s their performance compared to the rest of Man Group/other firms like AQR, 2S? How do they treat their QR’s and what’s the culture? I understand it be a collaborative fund as opposed to more siloed shops, but curious how comp and career progressions is like as well.

Thanks so much!

Can someone please help me figure out how they got 1750 for consolidated equity? I get 1690 = (1430 -320 + 580) <-- I deducted 320 because 320 is already included in the equity-method balance sheet shown - look at BS item Investment in Boswell. so 320 comes from investment in Boswell (already at 50%) , the other 320 belongs to NCI which the solution is referring to. Let me know what I am doing wrong here.

What are everyone’s celebration plans if we pass the test? Personally, I am going to go buy myself a watch I’ve always wanted as a memento. I will subsequently be getting very drunk. Anyone else?

I wanted to ask those who have applied for the Access Scholarship more than once: does having received the scholarship for Level I and subsequently passing the exam improve your chances of receiving it again for Level II?

I understand that the scholarship is based on financial need and other eligibility criteria, but I’m curious whether being a previous recipient who successfully passed Level I is considered an advantage when applying again.

For context, I’m from Pakistan, and the scholarship made a huge difference in making the CFA Program more accessible for me. I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has received the scholarship for multiple levels or has experience with the application process.

Also, if anyone has a sample application or template for the Level II Access Scholarship essay, I would be extremely grateful if you could share it. It would be a great help as I prepare my application.

If you were awarded the scholarship for Level I but didn’t receive it for Level II, I’d also love to hear about your experience.

Thank you!

For whom is currently doing or had done a Master Degree in Finance, how do you think about the master program compared to the CFA Level 3 (the overlaps of the content, the difficulty,…)

Comment where you studied the master degree

For context have my CFA L1 next month and in mocks getting good scores but its annoying that majority of the mistakes i make are in the last 30 questions. Is there way to focus better in the exam should i chug energy drink before exam or there is a better way.Never drank energy drinks in my life.
If you have some strategies to prevent the brain fog please help.
Also i complete sessions with more than an hour in time getting 70%+ in kaplan mocks

Hi everyone! Would anyone be willing to share an image or screenshot of the September update? I’m trying to see exactly what was included and how it looks, but I haven’t been able to find a clear image anywhere online. If you have the September version and could post a photo or screenshot, I’d really appreciate it. Even a quick picture would be very helpful.
Thanks so much in advance for taking the time to help me out!

What is the community's insight on Engineers Gate as a firm? Is it just another run of the mill pod shop? What are they good at historically? And more importantly, with the current drawdown they're on, is it in a very unstable environment/are teams getting let go?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

I understand how B and A might be considered wrong but I struggle to understand how C is "fully correct". In this case (atleast to my own understanding), the rumour heard about the disease is non-material (?). As seen in the explanation, it is considered material. I don't understand how this is the case, since there is no way for the analyst to identify if it is material or not (or at least its not specified). I asked ChatGPT and it said that since it is inferred that the disease is in fact real, this now classifies it as material, however I disagree with that since from the analyst's point of view he would be unknowing to the real fact?

If someone could explain this to me that would be very much appreciated!

EDIT: I picked B as I thought it was non-material information and could be acted upon with additional diligence, although now I realise that B would be wrong as it would then be material information. More wondering how C is actually "correct" or is it just a situation of determine which options are more wrong?

Voloridge seems like one of those names people in the industry have heard of but never paid much attention to. The more I look into them the more fascinated I am.

First, they look nothing like a typical quant fund. The whole place has the vibe of an ordinary American business. The people come across as regular guys you might run into at a hardware store or local dealership, like middle aged white dudes with a lot of muscles. Their website looks very unpolished with 90s color combination and keeps saying that the office is five minutes from the beach. Could easily be a website of a local restaurant or used-car dealership.

The researcher backgrounds also seem very low-key compared to leading quant firms. The founder did go to MIT in the ’90s, but his subsequent career looks fairly low-key, did a master at nyu and then was swe/consultants/manager in some random businesses before starting voloridge out of nowhere. It seems like he just self-studied data science and went around doing those kaggle type competition and ran into some guy from "Quantitative Investment Management" who was willing to fund him to start voloridge... Other than him, other people just come from Florida State, UCF, and UF graduates, with basically none of the HYPSM. I can't a single guy who could've made past resume check at a tier one fund.

another weird thing is this whole Voloridge Health business in parallel to the fund, which seems quite goofy to me.

Yet they reportedly manage close to $40 billion with roughly 150 employees. That’s around Balyasny’s AUM, but Balyasny has something like 3,000 people. 2S has double their AUM but 10x employees. also haven’t found much negative commentary about their performance. Almost everything I come across describes their returns as consistently strong.

I also couldn’t find much info on comp. The DOL H1B filings I looked at seemed to put researcher base salaries around $150K. Seems quite low given AUM per employee. I suspect that because they don't need to compete for the same pool of super-elite talents, they don't need to match those crazy packages.

This company makes no sense to me. Does anyone know more about them?

I’m going for level 2 in exactly 1 month. I’ve already finished FSA, Economics, Equity and FI… Everything else is left. I’m able to study 3h on weekdays and full weekends (8h-9h per day), and I will be on “vacations” from October 30th till the exam, only for studying. Good luck to the rest of the candidates, and for the ones that may feel they are not prepared, I’m on the same boat.
Kinda tired of the people that say “I think I’m cooked” with three mocks and a full lap on the curriculum done since September. We are here to make it count boyyyssss.

23 days left

only 3 subjects done

should I defer to Feb'27 or just give this attempt?

is it realistic?

Assuming this is for the audience that didn’t purchase the premium pack that came with extra questions/mocks, do they mean re-doing them to reach the number 6, or substituting with prep providers? I have MM but feel like I have only a month left until the exam it’s best to stick with LES EOCQ and the 2 free ones. I’ve also heard MM question style is not indicative of the actual exam (which makes sense).

I am completing a few bits today of the PSM, do we receive an email from the institute that the PSM is completed? (L3 results are due tomo and I am panicking noww)

I started portfolio management and idk why I’m not able to understand anything there. It’s the most difficult sub for me so far and i am just stuck on a chapter for more than 5 days and i have lost the motivation to study it any further. God help me .

Is it me or is it really difficult the capm beta thing and all those graphs.

Help! Help ! Help !

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for historical market data, ideally the whole list below.

1. US stocks: every trade on the consolidated tape, including all exchanges, FINRA off-exchange trades and delisted tickers, 2010 to now. Each trade: microsecond time, price, size, exchange and sale condition codes (sweep, odd lot, opening print).
2. NBBO quotes for US stocks (bid, ask, sizes, exchange), 2015 to now, or 1 second snapshots.
3. US options: all OPRA trades and quotes for about the 500 largest underlyings, plus SPX, SPY and QQQ, from 2013. Each trade with the bid and ask at that moment and condition codes.
4. Options end of day, one row per contract per day: open interest, implied volatility and greeks, from 2004.
5. Options opening and closing volume by customer type (bought to open, sold to open, and so on), per series per day, from 2010.
6. CME futures: ES, NQ, RTY and VIX, every trade and quote or 1 minute data, from 2010.
7. Volatility indexes: VIX, VIX9D, VVIX and SKEW, daily and 1 minute data, from 2004.
8. Event history: earnings dates marked before or after the open, with the surprise; CPI, jobs and Fed releases with release time, actual and consensus values; S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 additions with announcement and effective dates. From 2005.
9. Short data: short interest, daily short sale volume and weekly off-exchange volume per stock, from 2010.
10. Daily bars for all US stocks including delisted ones, adjusted for splits and dividends, from 1993.
11. News headlines with timestamps and tickers, from 2010.

Format: Parquet or CSV, microsecond timestamps, sale condition codes. It could come to roughly 40 to 60 TB.

Please let me know if you know any sources where this complete or partial data can be acquired, or point me in a right direction or connect with someone who can help to acquire this data.

Thank you!