Exam Feedback November 2016 Part 2 Exam Feedback

Nicole Seaman

Director of CFA & FRM Operations
Staff member
Subscriber
We hope that everyone did well on the exam! We would love to hear any feedback that you have. How did it go? Did you encounter unexpected questions? Thank you in advance for any feedback you can provide!

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emilioalzamora1

Well-Known Member
exceptionally hard. Many hazard rate questions, CoCo's (it's effect on capital requirements) have been tested in 2 or 3 questions, strange example with Tracking Error and table with different benchmarks. Many questions about Central Counterparties.
 
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shettynipun

New Member
Was a tough nut to crack.. good mix of quantitative and qualitative questions..
Quantitative was still manageable, theory questions were just bouncers..
 

Siqueue

Member
I thought the first half was fine but it then got quite tough indeed. The last set of questions based on the bank data was really tough in particular.

Compared to L1 I was not stretched for time. Left with about 50 mins to go.
 
Paper was good mix of quant and qualitative questions...what I hated was 3 questions linked with one reading(there were nearly 3 such readings)!NSFR was a pain for me...
1)should we include recovery from insurance in op loss?
2) what is the answer for position,duration,cash flow mapping?3)can back testing confidence level be different than var cl?
4)wat was the answer for vol term structure(I marked 2 year option )
5)I was unable to work out Ho Lee model problem..it was not straightforward I felt

Rest of them I ll post Tomo...too tiring after 4 hours of exam
 

Johnkrause1

Member
Subscriber
It was a tough exam lots of long winded calculations with a lot of information to read. Even quite a few of the qualitative questions where not that straightforward
 

Arnaudc

Member
Yeah in my opinion this exam was fair (all the questions were related to AIM in GARP readings) but some questions were difficult as 2 options could really fit...
Well I guess all we have to do is waiting for 1.5 month and see what will be coming.. ;)
 

farahm

Member
the exam was challenging, hard BUT in line with aims in my opinion. Some questions easier than others. A lot of op risk questions, hazard rates, backtesting, model risk. a lot more qualitative questions than expected and because of that hard to say if one did well ! lets enjoy the next 6 weeks !
 
holy cow, the Part 2 exam is the toughest exam ever, even though I passed level 3 CFA, this exam is way harder than than even the CFA level 2 and level 3. A lot of questions are item set with VERY long reading but only a small part of that is required to answer the questions. Many concepts was checking again and again but it is not ever seen in any previous exams or practice exam (CoCo was tested 3 times). The VaR question was very tricky, not like anything was seen and the liquidity adjusted VaR question was using the number of day to dispose of assets! (by the way anyone know how to do that question?). The most annoying thing is they changed the format of the exam into more like CFA level 3 with long descriptions using for multiple questions, it is so hard to keep going back and forth and they put a lot of redundant things in the questions that make it super confusing. The concepts question was supposed to be walk in the park in previous year but this year it is like the most tricky ones ever, lots of questions about the CCP and correlations with very hard concepts and answers that are so close it is very difficult to chose. Overall, I would say I got 88% for practice exam but for this one I am not even sure I can get 50%!!! Anyone know what is the usual minimum cut off for a pass?
 
Here are the list of things tested as I remember:
+Liquidity Duration
+ CCP (Heavily tested)
+ ES
+ Hedge Fund strategies (very hard question, list the disadvantage of strategies)
+ CoCo (3 questions)
+ Performance Attribution (very tricky one with asset allocation alpha)
+ Illiquid asset return concepts
+ Backtesting (Confidence level vs Var confidence level)
+ Operational Risk (heavily tested on concepts questions)
+ Model Risk
+ Technology Risk
+ Securitization process
+ Correlation
+ Derive Hazard rate from multiple methods
+ Cummulative PD
+ Credit Spread (derived from CDS)
+ Marginal CVA
+ RAROC
+ Risk Plan
Many more things that I cant remember now
 
Btw only about 3-4 questions are similar to the Practice Exam by Bionic Turtle and about 4-5 questions are similar to the Practice Exam by GARP. This really caught me off guard as most of the questions seem like come from no where!
 

Moey

Member
holy cow, the Part 2 exam is the toughest exam ever, even though I passed level 3 CFA, this exam is way harder than than even the CFA level 2 and level 3. A lot of questions are item set with VERY long reading but only a small part of that is required to answer the questions.

The most annoying thing is they changed the format of the exam into more like CFA level 3 with long descriptions using for multiple questions, it is so hard to keep going back and forth and they put a lot of redundant things in the questions that make it super confusing

Feel the same way, thanks for your post dan!
 

Eternity

Member
So exhausted after taking the exam. I would say the exam was fair to tough.

Quantitative questions are quite manageable. Only those simple formulas are tested:
Three-tier securization
LVaR
CVaR
Ho-LeeModel
PSA/CPR/SMM
Hazard rate model
Spread and RR
Correlation Swap
RAROC
Tier I Captital Ratio
Incremental VaR


Most difficult questions come from those vignette questions and ops risk questions

Some questions are very very tricky in a way that I can eliminate 3 choices, but the only one left seems incorrect as well

But anyway, that's wait for 6 months.
 

Moey

Member
One question I vaguely recall was the asset/liability pension fund question where they described risks: 1. manager changed the expected asset allocation based on expectations and lost money, 2. and the sponser was concerned about liabilities exceeding assets, etc.,

The question was: which relevant risk was not described? active management risk, sponser risk, counter party risk, liquidity risk.

I was thrown off not by the paragraph/description but the wording of the question. i.e., the only risk not mentioned (imo) was counter party risk, but that seemed like kind of a stretch.
 

JNL

New Member
Btw only about 3-4 questions are similar to the Practice Exam by Bionic Turtle and about 4-5 questions are similar to the Practice Exam by GARP. This really caught me off guard as most of the questions seem like come from no where!

Agreed! I thought I had managed all the practice question from Bionicturtle, but was totally unprepared for the exam questions...
 
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