FRM Books

[dsdenny]

Hi David,

I'm new to this forum. I read in one of the blog posted in this website that FRM is relatively less coherent as compared to the CFA.

My question to you is how do we make it more cohesive for ourselves, or in other words, which are the best books one needs to refer to for FRM Level 1 exam.

Thanks

Denny

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi Denny,

I've been thinking about this: next year, if the FRM level 1 doesn't morph too greatly, we may want to teach the L1 in a top-down manner, which might make more sense than the order of the Study Guide (esp. now that GARP has slightly de-coupled the AIMs from the exam).

So, as i've had chance to marinate over L1, I think you could argue, along the lines of, it has a "trunk" with four core texts (this is all rough approximation, please realize I am grossly "rounding off"):

1. Gujarati
2. Hull
3. Tuckman
4. Jorion VaR

Then many of the other readings are like "ancillary" branches, e.g.:

Hull > Linda Allen (i.e., refinement on Hull re: volatility)
Hull > Geman (i.e., refinement on Hull re: commodity futures)
Tuckman > Fabozzi Ch 13 (refines corporate bonds)

So, I would say the four above consistute the "coherent core" (and you may notice, here in the forum, the sense than several candidates are currently focused on Gujarati and Hull: I think that is exactly right timing. Gujarati and Hull are impactful anchors). But, okay, you still have some gaps to fill, e.g.:

* Gallati's cases
* Grinold's APT
* Stulz (the paper not the textbook; the textbook is notoriously a time trap due to the difficult prose)

For what it's worth, instead of marketing (we don't spend marketing $ aside from the newsletter), Tiffany is posting free Q&A here to the forum, then I blog those and annoted sample exam questions to the blog. And our "free Q&A" efforts are focused on these core texts (Tiffany is finished with selected Gujarati and will start Hull soon)...paid members will get complied PDF...hope that helps...David

 

[dsdenny]

Thanks a lot David.


Regards,

Denny.