Three college guys I know: 1. Gets fairly straight As - studies ass off. 2. Gets fairly straight As - doesn't do sh&t 3. Gets B average: doesn't study too much, panics at exams. Result after taking series 7. 1. Read book + course. Studied a lot (as usual) received an 88 (I may be off by +-1) 2. Read book in two days - Got 86 3. Read Book + course. Studied as usual. Got 50. The point is, know where you stand. That will tell you how to study. Best off luck 2.
I just read the material over the night before the exam and got a 90. Just kidding! Don't you just hate people who say that kind of crap? The real deal is that you have to know the stuff...so you better read the material and take some practice exams. Your learning curve as well as your race will dictate the amount of hours that will be necessary (if you're chinese or korean, you should pass without problems..haha just kidding again).
Reading the material overnight is extremely difficult but it can be done in two nights. Practice exams are key! - took as many as my time allowed (3 full ones). If you get above 80s on the practice exams - you should pass.
I think if you already know some stuff about the markets, you should be able to pass with 4 days of full studying. That includes reading the book, and taking all exams. If you don't know zip about anything... 2 weeks should be plenty. Its pretty much all memorization. I don't want to make it seem easy, but it isn't that difficult believe me. It took me 4 days for the S7. 2 days for the S55. I think I could have used another day on the S55 though. Anyways, I passed both and I personally dont think i'm some kind of genius. This is how i studied for it, using STC materials... book and exams... no cd: 1. Read the whole book, a lot of pages, but you can get it done 1-1/2 days. Make sure you a reading... not staring blankly at the words. The quiz questions help. 2. Take exams. Every exam, i'll do 25 of the problems. Grade them, look and learn what I did wrong. Then do the next 25... then grade them and so forth. And check why such and such is right blah blah blah. BTW I had plenty of wrong answers. lol. 3. After about finishing half the exams. Which should take about a day and 1/2. That was about 6 exams for STC. My recommendation is while taking these practice exams is not to sit there and ponder about each question. If you know it... you know it. If you don't... eliminate as many as you can, and guess. You'll soon find out whether or not you are right. Dont forget to mark the ones you guessed on, so incase you guessed right, you can find out WHY you are right! 4. RESKIM the book. It is a lot quicker than you think. Go page by page, skipping the quizzes tho, and read what you don't know... and skip what you already do know. After taking 6 of the exams, you'll know your weaknesses and strengths. Dont waste your time studying what you already know!!! 5. Take the rest of the exams with the same method described in 2 and 3. 6. The next step is the funnest part. You'll know how well u retain things by doing this. Go back to the #1 exam. And go over all of those questions you guessed and got wrong. And see if your able to get about 90%+ right. I didn't bother retesting all the questions I got right. It should be a fairly quick process. Question 1... it's A! I remember!. FLip back, and check... simple as that. You'll be amazed how many you remember. Especially since you did iit 1-2 days ago!!! Do that with all those questions you missed. Probably about 400-500 with 13 STC exams. If you can get 90%+ right on the wrong questions, I think you are set. 7. The night before the exam. Reskim the book. See if you are missing in any areas and go pass it tomorrow morning!!! I dunno if this will work for everyone, but know your study style. I've always been a procrastinator, so was pretty satisfied with my results. Especially if I took any courses and so forth, I would have had to spend a lot of time and money... and it would be all for nothing in my case. Know your limits is all I can say. and Good Luck! xbrxx
Anyone stating that all you have to do is MEMORIZE material for the Series 7 is talking out of his arse! The fact of the matter is that many people that have never had any experience with the options markets, let alone understanding what they are, cannot simply MEMORIZE this material. One must have a "working" understanding of bull and bear put/call spreads in order to work out the computations of premium in the exam. To say otherwise, is simply being misleading. While the Series 7 is not as computationally intense as the Series 3 is ( for commodities ), I simply cannot agree with the previous poster.
Err... you must be smoking bro. Last time I checked... the series 7 isn't all about options.. And still, a lot of the options part is not about computations. The options section doesn't even go into deep detail of options anyways. What is a put? What is a call? What is a spread... etc.... Like I said, if you have previous knowledge of financial markets. 4 days can be done. Like I did. I have some experience in options and a lot in equities. But zilch in munis.. bonds.. rules and regulation... What is there to calculate? Hrmm... THe most simple options spread profit and losses... SMA.... Margin requirements... Financial Ratios??? Come on. Cake. Financial ratios require pure memorization of the formula. No concepts involved there anyways. Take a stroll to cboe.com. and You'll learn everything you need about options in a couple of hours for the S7. They'll even give you pure examples of how they work in the real world. As I said... 2 weeks is plenty for the person without a background in financial markets. And I stand by what I said. It is pretty much all about memorization. Sure there are some concepts to grasp. But not much.. and not too complicated. I am no professional options trader. When I first learned options. It did not take weeks as you make it seem to grasp what a call, put, spreads and straddles are. Maybe a couple of hours at most. If you memorized the whole STC book are you telling me you will not pass? However, if you understand some bull and put call spreads? you will pass? Misleading as you think my "advice" is.... The S7 doesn't require some genius to pass as you make it seem. It is about memorization and understanding simple ideas. BTW, my "advice" is plain and simple. If I can do it... you can too! lol. But hey, everyone should know their limits as I said before. If you don't like to rush yourself, then maybe my style isn't for you. BTW, how long did you study to pass the S7? xbrxx
Just Memorize The Answers. That way, it will only take you about 2 days of memorization. Oh, and by the way . . . You can use the same method for the Series 3 as well because that is total memorization as well. No computation whatsoever! NOT
My point was... Its 5th grade math calculations. This divided by that... blah blah blah. This multiply this. We aren't talking about Vector Calculus here folks. You can memorize a whole calc book all the formulas from a calc book and you STILL might not pass! HELL, i'll give you the whole book, and 7 hours to take a test. and you probably wont pass(unless of course your good at math)! LOL! But with the s7... you will. Maybe, I am wrong tho. It might take you 10 years to pass the s7. That is, you were just born! lol. You will have to learn your abcs... addition.. subtraction.. multiplication... and how to divide! I suggest everybody get their kids math books and have a REFRESHER course! lol I am not talking about photographic memory here. It is all there in your study materials. And you don't even need to memorize everything. Like I said before, take those exams. and you'll know your weaknesses. And you'll know where to focus your studying on. In 4 days, you will be able to cover all that material. We are talking about 10 hour days here btw. so 40 hours to pass the S7, is not as fast as you guys are thinking. I did it, its not that difficult, so why should I make it seem so complicated as you guys do? xbrxx
rayd, As seisan stated on the first page I also started a similar thread a couple of weeks ago asking for some tips on S-7 exam. I did get lots of great tips, comments and advice. You may want to check it out also. I am still studying! :eek: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21915&perpage=6&pagenumber=1