I am interested in pursuing CFA -- read somewhere it is "poor man's MBA." Not to be critical -- I just finished my MBA/Finance at a "respectable" institution (not Ivy League). Anyone want to comment on the difference between CFA and MBA? Particularly in how the job market views it?
If you're not even a candidate, I don't think you can comment. Just in my local society are jobs like CFO for H&R Block, and you're going to tell me it doesn't pay?
I'll put it to you like this the way Doug Van Eaton did. Say I'm hiring for a job. There's a few MBA's, but the BS CFA goes straight to the top of the pile. That's how it works. MS in Finance is on par with obtaining a CFA charter. You'd also know it as Quantitative Finance at Ivy League Colleges.
That's how I felt about both sessions. I'll tell a story to that. One of the candidates had broke his leg and was on pain medicine in Dec 07's test and was refunded by the CFA institute as he was high on morphine and pain killers and unable to really study. He claimed all he did was read the CFAI materials, but I'll be the first to tell him he's not going to pass. He was getting his MBA from UMKC. I think he stayed the whole first session, but walked out in a half hour in the second. Want to lay bets on whether he passed?
Yeah, I'm on that portfolio manager track for sure. I just got a call from someone who saw me on gobig.com asking me if I'd be interested in managing a hedge fund of $150 million. I bet you know what my answer is. On another note. I guess I'm at 4:1 margin. I don't have enough capital to make $5k per day. That would be an above average trade for me. Actually it might be accessible, but I only take position trades for a few days a couple times per month. Here's one of the funniest things that I find. A manager like Ken Heebner of CGM Focus, or even Warren Buffet has huge drawdowns sometimes. If I was willing to risk 35% DD's, I bet I could triple money every year. Obviously that's not my goal. Just look at a chart of CGM Focus, you'll see his DD's are actually worse than some of the systems in chartscript rankings at wl4.wealth-lab.com. Even a simple buy on the dip strategy has less risk and more return than his fund. This is an irony to me.
For those of you that are charterholders: What kind of bump did you get when you received your charter? Did you get a bump when you passed each level as well, or only after you got awarded your charter?
Actuaries get a bump, but that really doesn't apply for the CFA charter. It's an all or nothing deal, I think.
Well, I figured that if you're in the process of obtaining your charter and have passed one or more exams and are registered for the next, that it would be worth something. Of course, if you drop out then whatever you did so far is worthless.
I'm told it will last for about 10 years, then you'll have to start over if you never finish past Level I.