FRM PART 2 Exam - may 2011

[the luncheon meat]

anyone taken the paper already? not sure if it can be posted now, since the american side is having their exam soon/now ..

i am glad it's ok ... and its overwhelming .. to say the least.

 

[braxxus]

Off to take the exam now, I guess I will see how it is. Would be hard to beat Level I for difficulty. I am a little worried as I didn't read the text and only used Bionic Turtle this time around. Didn't get all of the questions and everything for level II completed yet. We will see how it goes.

 

[[email protected]]

Compared to level 1 last November, I think level 2 was a walk in the park. Hopefully I will not fail after saying this!=D

 

[[email protected]]

Agree with olajawon 100%. There were a few stumpers and weird questions but nothing like level 1. Maybe L1 scared me into more prep this time around, I definitely put in the time. But I was shocked how many softballs there were.

 

[braxxus]

I would not say the exam was easy as a number of the questions i had to flat out guess. They managed to make some tricky questions and there were a few that I didn't know if there was a right answer, but that is probably just me. The exam was a walk in the park compared to level 1. I finished the exam 80 minutes early, so I decided to spend another 30 minutes double checking answers. I changed two answers on the way back, one of which I was sure I missed originally.

My feeling for this exam is much better than Level 1. Level 1 was MUCH harder than any of the 3 CFA levels, but Level 2 was easier than any of them as well. It almost seems like Level 1 is the weed out portion.

 

[saisubram1998]

Leve 2 exam was pretty easy, i only hope i am note rated D, david's refresher questions were helpful,
but without understanding of the core especially volatality smile, SMM Rate's link with MBS pricing,
exotic option paper might have been tough. I wish GARP publishes its questions with answers.

I hope for a good July 6th last year i passed the Level I , and this year will be a repeat result

In India Level I aspirants were very upset that it was too tough

 

[braxxus]

We only had 7 people at the Philadelphia site, at least 1 of which was taking the ERM it seems. I thought we would have move people, but that didn't turn out to be the case. There was only 1 question on the volatility smile, it wasn't like that many things were covered over and over. Basel related items are the ones that I remember the most, but of course they were the ones that worried me the worst.

 

[Harel]

I would say that L2 exam was anything but a walk in the park...
After L1 I thought I prepared well enough (scored at least 75% in the practice exams and went over all of BT questions), but was disappointed to find that the questions were quite long and conentrated on couple of specific topics. It seems like GARP is trying hard to raise the bar (maybe to equate the level of FRM to CFA) on the expanse of the candidates (see the declining pass rate).

The sample exams published by GARP was no where near the level of the actual exam (downloaded both 2010 and 2011).

Hopefully coming July 6th we'll all laugh and be certified...

 

[[email protected]]

I can see lot of comparisions with Level 1 Nov paper...for the benefit of people who have given Level 1 prior to last Nov, can anyone tell me how was the paper as compared to previous Level 2 papers and any idea on the cut off....Also can any1 help me with the pass rate of Level 2 last year plzzz?

In my view there were few freebies and some very tricky questions..but many questions where you stand a 50-50 chance...any views?

 

[Imad]

It would be interesting if anyone could tell roughly what was asked...

 

[the luncheon meat]

It would be interesting if anyone could tell roughly what was asked...​

how interesting would it be?

 

[[email protected]]

Compared to L1 in november, it was easy. (Or may be I studied from BT this time ). Quant questons were pretty straight forward except few, theory - again except few question, direct from the ref material.

Well in my experience, relative grading exam are unpredictable when easy so I'll wait for July 6.

All the best everyone.

 

[toofreak]

I remember there were lots of Basel 3 questions

 

[[email protected]]

Hi all - anyone have an answer to this question on Level II from yesterday's test?

Size of the portfolio GBP 1,000,000. Annual mean of returns = 10%, Annual volatility = 40%. Calculate both the normal and lognormal VaRs at the 95% level and which of the following statements is correct?
a) Lognormal VaR is higher than normal VaR by GBP13,000 (approx - can't remember the exact #)
b) Lognormal VaR is higher than normal VaR by GBP17,000 (approx - can't remember the exact #)
c) Lognormal VaR is lower than normal VaR by GBP13,000 (approx - can't remember the exact #)
d) Lognormal VaR is lower than normal VaR by GBP13,000 (approx - can't remember the exact #)

Thank you!

 

[the luncheon meat]

i think it was lognormal smaller than 130k , which is not any of the options given in exam

 

[Harel]

The last answer seems to repeat the previous answer, but my answer is that Log Normal VaR is lower by 13,035GBP

 

[Harel]

I agree that the actual answer was not in the suggested answers, but they probably had the intention of making C the correct answer.

 

[[email protected]]

@ Harel, I agree.. I couldnt get the answer from 1 of the options, but the closest was option C. Guess my answer had a '0' extra, or probably a calc mistake

Any1 has an answer to the Tracking Error question, where active risk and Incremental Risk were given and he had a assign a weight of 0 to the one of the funds to minimize the risk?

Also any idea of pass rate for Level 2 in 2010?

 

[[email protected]]

L2 Nov 2010 pass rate was 54.9%

http://www.garp.org/frm/overview/frm-facts/frm-statistics-and-charts.aspx

 

[toofreak]

The trick in that question was that the vol figures were given ANNUALIZED and they were asking for the ONE DAY VaR, so you should scale both VaRs vols by the root of time. I think that's what they were really testing.