Marcus “the moderator”

Thank you for posting Marcus,

Marcus, I have come to admire your monotone and tunnel vision responses that tend to drill directly to the heart of the question in hand.  I have read quite a bit of your work; even the stuff with that guy who wanted his money back because the questions from the practice exam weren’t on the actual test.  That’s crazy hey?! I mean, who would have thought that the PRACTICE questions would not be the exact same questions as the ones on the actual test?  This guy was a real piece of work, he blamed CSI for being a corporate money making machine and conspiring to make him fail so they can reap increased profits.  Then he went on to assure his loyal audience that he studied the questions his instructor provided and that he had them memorized to the tee.  He couldn’t believe he failed the first test, being that he apparently had the test memorized before he wrote it; or so he thought.

After all the dust was settled and the genius had finally settled down, Marcus still dished out monotone non-emotional answers.  At this point I was even a little ticked at this.  Here I thought: great, another individual in finance who fails to apply the basic concepts of ethics and personal accountability.  Then it got me thinking, Marcus you hound you, your a ‘freakin’ robot.  That’s right, I know you watch Sarah Connor to.  There is no other way to explain it. Nobody could be that level headed and drained of all emotion….it would have to be a robot.  Well I found it slightly amusing to visualize the T-1000 sitting hunched over a keyboard answering a response about common shares.

Well Marcus, just wanted to give you a thanks, whoever or whatever you are.  You truly did prove that there is no such thing as a stupid question.  OK that was a flat out lie, but at least we can pretend…..right?

Steve

Hoped this helped.

CSC Tools: The CSI Discussion Boards

After digging through the online message boards prior to enrollment, I was curious as to why there was little to no activity regarding the CSC.  Therefore, it did not come as much of a surprise that the Canadian Securities Institute (CSI) had an internal based message board system for each course.  This sounds kinda lame, like something one of those ‘web 2.0‘ companies would try to spin as social networking or crowd sourcing or some other buzzword.  What you quickly realize after peering into these message boards is the enormous amount of useful information tucked inside. The way the message board system is laid out is actually quite easy to quickly navigate to an answer you require.  The format looks like this:

Discussion Boards 2008/2009

1. Main
2. Getting Started
3. Tech Q&A
4. Study Groups
5. Volume 1: Modules (1 – 12)
6. Volume 2: Modules (12 – 24)
7. Exam Q&A
8. Facts

Sections 5 & 6 have the most content, as each chapter is a message board in itself.  The depth of content tends to range from the mediocre “what is convertible security?” to the extremely difficult “how do I calculate the PV of a bonds income stream using the following sets of numbers…”.  Some minor annoyances with the board stem mainly from the  time it takes to shuffle through these responses to steal little gems of gold that the moderator dishes out in responses to students questions.  Shuffling through questions like “if ur redin the ch 1.22 on tbl 4.1, which incm security cna replace the bond yield if the bond yield’s yield, isn’t really a yield, but a bond….with a yield.”

Translate that into, viewer discretion is advised.  Seriously, if your not confident with the material, don’t go sifting through the message board post by post like I did.  Some of the questions will lead you off into a path and you will have to correct yourself later on down the road.  Some of the posts are entertaining, as the moderator tends to direct focus to modules, FAQ’s, websites and so forth. There is a couple hysterical people who tend to get angry that they are not being spoon-fed the answer, which always provides me with some comedic relief.  I really liked the moderator, Marcus. I almost feel like I know him, and his monotone responses. He seems very knowledgeable, and divulges only the necessary information.  He makes the students find the information, recite what they already know.  So it’s not just a one stop shot for definitions or something, but it is a great resource.  In fact, I would list this resource as one of the most important tools I have come across.

Since everyone approaches topics differently, some of the more intelligent individuals address questions I did not even think of, and of course, Marcus has a great 4 line answer for me to commit to memory.  Needless to say I added a lot of critical value by taking the time out to sift through 900+ posts in the first 12 chapters alone. The turnaround time for responses is 2 – 4 days, and typically they have a student involvement as well. These are just some thoughts to add before you consider taking the course or even before your exams.

– Steve

Coming In The Next Week….

A few of the topics I will be uploading in the next week:

• CSC Forums
• CSC Tools
• The CSC Check
• The Use of Cue-Card Software
• The Use of External Testing Software
• The Wonderful World of Torrents
• Week in Review
• Pre-Exam Notes
• Post-Exam Notes

Chapter 12: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Corporations & Their Financial Statements (Weight:8% — Pages: 29)

This chapter also contains a relatively low weight on the test. The primary concepts covered in this chapter include; the balance sheet, the earnings statement, the retained earnings statement, the cash flow statement, the annual report.  If anyone has ever taken an introductory account class, this entire chapter will be review. Even though I have taken a number of accounting classes, I found myself spending a great deal of time on getting through this chapter, relative to chapters of the same page counts.  I spent a large majority of this time finding the connections between balance sheets and cash flow statements, and understanding why these items existed and what purpose they served.

Although none of the material in this chapter is by any mean difficult, the big picture view of this material is somewhat complex.  If you are good at straight memorization you will have no trouble completing this chapter and retaining it. I am not a great student of memorization, I have to understand the concepts before I can truly remember them. Thus I spent a lot of time looking over financial statements and linking items to each-other. This may or may not be necessary, as we will soon find out.

This is the last of the chapters before my level 1 test next Monday. I have spent the last few hours typing up these posts to help me catch up to this point. I plan on uploading a few more posts before the exam and than after the exam a number of posts similar to this structure.

– Stev

Chapter 11: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Financing & Listing Securities (Weight:7% — Pages: 36)

The primary topics of this chapter include: types of business structures, incorporated businesses, government financing, corporate financing, the corporate financing process, other methods of distributing securities to the public and the listing process.  As one of the last chapters before quiz #1, I was urgent to quickly progress through these chapters. This chapter was by far the easiest material out of all the chapters I have so far completed. There was still a couple concepts that I had to retain, but for the most part this was a review of basic business school.  I found the information valuable, but not terribly important. The low weight assignment also indicates to me the relative importance this material will have on the test.

Although I will review this material, I foresee it being one of my stronger areas of the test.  For those of you who are looking for a quick chapter, the large page count is relative to the content; that is, consider this chapter about 19 pages long if we are taking into context the material on those pages.

– Steve

Chapter 10: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Derivatives (Weight:10% — Pages: 40)

The primary concepts involved in this chapter are: what is a derivative, types of underlying assets, why investors use derivatives, options, forwards & futures, and rights & warrants.  These concepts were crystal clear to me from the beggining but take a great deal of time to go through, as there are a number of variations of similar types of securities. The trick to this chapter was forming a base understanding of the primary concepts and then trying to memorize the variations of those concepts.

Overall I found this chapter one of the most entertaining and interesting.  The concepts used are advanced and take a great deal of understanding to even realize its potential application.  Although there wasn’t any direct cross-over from chapters, there was a lot of presupposed knowledge in terms of structures and some definitions.  Overall I found this chapter to be complex but entertaining.

– Steve

Chapter 9: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Equity Securities: Equity Transactions (Weight:10% — Pages: 19)

The primary topics covered in this chapter include: cash accounts, margin accounts, short selling, trading and settlement procedures and buying & selling securities.  This chapter built upon the concepts and definitions learned in chapter 8 and some from the economics modules.  None of the concepts were particularly difficult, however, some of them took longer to stick than others.  The concepts here are highly reliant on the understanding of the concepts up until this point. The next chapter is similar in that it build upon a majority of concepts across different chapters.

I was somewhat familiar with these concepts, which helped me absorb the material faster. Overall I found this chapter came easy, but only at the expense of the understanding of a couple of other chapters.

– Steve

Chapter 8: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Equity Securities: Common & Preferred Shares (Weight:13% — Pages: 37)

I don’t know what it was about this chapter, but no amount of red bull, breaks and internal motivational monologues could make this chapter any less dry.  I enjoy day trading, watching bloomberg…etc, but this just seemed to go on and on forever.  It’s only 37 pages, but it felt like a lot of it was filler content.  A lot of the material was new for me, however, it seemed fairly straight-forward.  The major components of this chapter included common shares, preferred shares, stock indexes and averages.

Not much to say about this chapter.  The information was quite useful and relevant, laid out well and flowed good.  I just could not get into this chapter.  Either way I have found that this particular chapter is a foundation to a lot of other content coming up in later chapters.

– Steve

Chapter 7: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Fixed-Income Securities: Pricing & Trading (Weight:11% — Pages: 28 )

The primary topics included in this chapter are: bond pricing principles, term structure of interest rates, bond pricing properties, bond-switching strategies, bond market trading and bond indexes.  This has been my most challenging chapter to figure out.  It builds on the concepts you learned in chapter 6 and applies pricing and trading properties and situations to them.  The concepts are based on a sound understanding of the concepts outlined in chapter 6, as there is much overlap.

Everything is laid out so your ability to understand everything greatly increases, and the topics seem to flow into each other.  After much frustration with the formulas in this chapter, I realized that I couldn’t use the functions in my calculator, causing me to get different variations in the answers.  The best thing to do for this chapter, would be to review as much examples and practice questions as possible. As I said this chapter was quite challenging, but after a lot of red bull and a good 9 hours I was able to finish it confidently.  I will be returning to this chapter during my review for a thorough recap. The fact that this chapter is only worth 11% brings some small level of satisfaction to me, as I most likely will be the weakest in this particular area.

– Steve

Chapter 6: Review

Disclaimer: Due to copyright laws I am unable to post exact details on the chapter.

Fixed-Income Securities: Features & Types (Weight:12% — Pages: 31)

The primary contents of this chapter include: fixed-income marketplace, fixed-income terminology and features, government of Canada securities, provincial and municipal government securities, corporate bonds, other fixed income securities, and bond and equity ratings.  This was the first real challenging chapter for me, as I knew little to nothing about fixed income securities.  Luckily the chapter format was familiar and the same strategy seems to work for my personal conceptualization.  This chapter didn’t involve a lot of looking back to link the major sections, but it did involve a lot of focus on the smaller components of each section.  You may be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of potential investment products in this chapter, but once you gain an understanding of their functions it becomes much easier.

This chapter took me quite awhile, as I spent time trying to regurgitate concepts I had just learned.  The focus of this chapter is mainly on educating you to the workings and function of each fixed income securities, but a lot of the nitty gritty specifics are left out until chapter 7.

– Steve