I’m Officially Done the CSC

I just received my second exam results back, did much better on the second exam then the first one.  I have to say it was a sight of relief when I saw the “Complete” underneath the registration tab on my personal menu.  It’s just another thing complete, and it does feel good to have done.  I contacted CSC to see how long the certificate normally takes to ship out.  The estimated time was between 4 and 6 weeks, so I’m guessing around mid-April.  For those of you who may be ordering frames from CSI, you may be interested to know that they don’t ship with the diploma.  The CSI representative told me that the frames ship separately from the certificate, and the time frame for a frame to delivery is roughly 2 weeks.  They are charging around $70 for a $30 frame, not including shipping.

I am waiting until late June when I register for the Wealth Management Essentials (WME) course to order the updates CSC text.  There is a small story behind this.  I found out that CSC was finalizing a updated textbook to be released late January, early February.  These dates were way to late for me, so I studies off the online textbook instead, and decided to order the hard copy book when I signed up in later courses.  I like having reference materials in hard copy format, and the low cost of a book compared to printing it myself seems worthwhile.  I made sure to get the updated 2009 hard copy CPH materials, which I am currently going through.

Overall, I found the CSC to be an excellent introductory course into finance, that exposed me to a variety of different sections in the financial services industry.  While this was an advantage for those seeking general knowledge of the industries primary component, I also found this approach to be quite arbitrary, vague and narrow in scope.  The first volume of the book had essential components that will be required throughout your studies, and with the exception of chapter 12, were all extremely useful to me.  I did find that separating chapter 12 from 13 and 14 was perplexing, given that they both speak to the same specific component; financial statement analysis.  Also I found the second volumes chapters to be stretched out, as if they were trying to fill the information in to make it worthwhile.  The chapters on segregated funds and mutual funds could have easily been placed into a larger chapter with more streamlining of contents.  The same goes for hedge funds and other managed products.  I found a lot of this information was repetitive, or simply just taking up space.

Overall I did find the second exam easier than the first, but probably not in the way you think.  What did it for me was, by the time I had taken 1 CSC exam and read the first 12 chapters, I was way more acquainted with the CSC writing style and testing style, than I was the first go around.  So although the material was similar in difficulty throughout most of the key chapters, I think my technique improved causing me to believe the second exam was easier.  Overall, I think both exams are challenging and require a good degree of comprehension.

My advice for those enrolled or planning on enrolling in the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) is to focus on understanding the key concepts, and worry less about calculations and memorization of definitions.  The materials in the bonds and financial statement sections were pivotal to success in the second half of the course.  Furthermore, I felt economics for the time required of study, was far to undervalued on the exam and not worth considerable time.  Overall, if you commit to a study routine and exam content comprehension, you will have no trouble passing this exam.  Don’t confuse comprehension with the basic concept of “easy”, that is thrown around far to often in relation to this course.

Be diligent, prepared and focus on the material at hand and you will find that, although the exam is challenging, you can excel if you have prepared properly.  I highly advise against straight memorization or trying to “game” the exam.  This will just cost you time and money in the end.  I hope this blog can be of some use to people taking this exam in the future, as I have tried to pack as much content and information in here as I could in the short time I took this course.  I will now be moving over to the CPH blog (link in the sidebar) for two short weeks, at which point I will then move to a more permanent home on my CFA blog (link in sidebar).

It’s been fun,

– Steve

Wording on the Exam

I thought i’d just quickly mention a very important part about the securities exam 1 and 2 that totally caught me off guard. I know i’ve mentioned this briefly a couple times, but I wanted to dedicate a small post to it so that some of you may be better prepared for whats ahead.  As you read through the material you may find that you think most of it is common sense, or fairly easy to understand.  This is not an illusion, as the material is laid out in a very logical way.  As you progress through the book, concepts begin to evolve that are built on previous concepts.  Before you get to confident though it is important to know what CSI will be testing you on, or in better terms, how they will be testing what you are reading.

Unlike other exams, a large part of both CSC exams is about comprehension.  There is no straight definition questions, rather, all of them require you to apply the concepts in some way.  With the math problems, the creators of the exam have figured out the four most likely combination of equations so that, even though you may get the right number, you may not have the right answer.  Use of the phrases “not”, except” and other command words are italicized, but easy to miss.  Furthermore the wording of the questions are intentionally packed with definitions and numbers, some which are relevant, some which are not.  I was surprised to learn that almost a third of both exams was reliant on your ability to take tests, that is, to identify common test tricks.  I don’t know that I am really on-board with the whole idea of the “trick question“, but I definitely think its a good idea to add comprehension into as many questions as possible.  Be prepared for a wordy test, and try to gain as much comprehension of the material as possible.

– 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