Tuesday, November 23, 2010

11/23/10 - MFE Study Schedule

Ok, I have been spending a little more time looking at the MFE material, and this is the schedule I am going to start with. I am using the Sections as broken out in TIA, as that will be my primary source. I will also be reading along in ASM with each section.

Each date listed is what I plan to work on in the week beginning on that date.

11/13/10 - TIA A. Parity and Other Relationships
11/20/10 - TIA B. Binomial Trees
11/27/10 - TIA C. Black-Scholes Formula
12/4/10 - TIA D. Market Making
12/11/10 - TIA E. Exotic Options
12/18/10 - TIA F. Lognormality
12/25/10 - TIA G. Stochastic Differential Equations
1/1/11 - TIA H. Interest Rate Models

In each week, I plan to review all the lessons, work to memorize the appropriate formulas, and work through the end of lesson questions. My plan is to have a comfort level with each section by the end of the week, knowing what formulas I still need to memorize, and knowing that I know how to approach the problems.

I know this study schedule finishes 4 months before the exam! I will reassess where I am at the end of this schedule. Right now I intend to begin working practice problems more seriously after finishing the lessons, with the intention of memorizing all the formulas and working the problems in good time. Realistically, I may decide certain lessons need more attention first, etc.

Currently, I am working through the lessons in section B. There are still some formulas I need to start memorizing, and then I will try to work practice problems starting tonight or tomorrow night.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

11/18/10 - Beginning Studying for MFE

Ok, I have just begun to study for MFE. I have about 25 weeks left until the exam, so I certainly have plenty of time to tackle it. Hopefully, I can average 2 hours per day over those weeks, which will give me 350 hours of studying.

I am going to use The Infinite Actuary's online seminar as well as the ASM manual. Back in September I worked through the first few chapters of ASM, but I am going to start from scratch here.

Yesterday, I did the Section A.1 of TIA, which was on Put Call Parity. This was really just a review of stuff I learned in FM, and it came back to me after a little bit. It was almost easy enough to make me overconfident, but I know I have a long way to go!

Today I looked at Section A.2, which dealt with options on currencies, bonds, and exchange options. The currency options I know I had a good handle on back in September, but the execution wasn't exactly coming back to me tonight. I am going to have to note formulas as I go along and keep them right near my monitor at work for frequent review. I will have to spend a little more time on this section before moving on, perhaps in combination with A.3 over the next few days.

There are 28 lessons grouped into 8 categories in the TIA seminar. I will have to put some thought into a schedule for me to tackle them. Although it seems like I have quite a while, I think this material is going to take a lot of work.

Should I start ending each post with a confidence level of passing this early? No, I don't think I will. As I get through more of the material and put a structure on my study schedule that will help me gauge my confidence level.