CFA Level III exam experience

So now I have officially appeared for CFA in three countries.
Level I – Singapore
Level II – India
Level III – USA

That should be some kind of a achievement I guess 🙂

Appeared for the exam in LA. The exam center was in Fairplex, Pomona.
I must say this is the best preparation for any Level I have done so far. Bad thing was in the morning exam I spent too much time explaining everything which resulted in me not being able to complete it in full three hours. I left like two questions. I might have been able to cover it in the afternoon session. Overall, I think I am a borderline case. If I fail, I will be in top 10 or 20% of failures and if I pass I will be in bottom 10-20% of passes.

Some tips for appearing for CFA level III:

1. Write to the point answers in morning session, don’t bother explaining everything. Bullet points for most of the answers should be good.
2. As most people are working while appearing for Level III. Start preparing early in order to finish the whole course. I started like in mid February while working from 9-8 pm and visiting different places in California over the weekend except for last two months.
3. Do a few test papers before the actual exams. Especially the morning session. Get in a habit of writing with a pen instead of typing on Computer 🙂
4. Schweser is more than enough.

Each Indian state as a country

Just came across this awesome grpahic where each Indian state is matched with its closest country in terms of GDP. This gives a more clear picture of where we stand instead of just saying ‘India Shining’

http://www.economist.com/content/indian-summary

The economist sure knows much more about statistics then Indian press or Government!

Search engines do work!

So I have been off the blogosphere lately, but I see a constant stream of traffic on my blog. Thanks to search engines if there is stuff relevant to the search term, traffic will be directed to your blog. Nice!

I just appeared for my CFA Level 3 exam (will post the experience in a separate post), work is slow so I have some time at my disposal. Also, one of my todo’s after CFA exam was to start blogging again, interact with people, have some point of view. Here I start on this auspicious day 🙂

I see a bunch of improvement on wordpress too. ‘Like’ button is good, Twitter and facebook integration for comments.

Full Tilt Poker Free Bankroll !!

Now who wouldn’t like that. Today I was 50$ richer in my FullTiltPoker account. I registered for it like 2-3 days before but it was too good to be true until I received 50$ credit in my account today.

You too can have free 50$. Just click on the banner below and follow the steps and in the process, let me make some money for poker too 🙂 . You know, I don’t win that often in poker.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

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Though written by a former Yale professor, In Indian context we just need to substitute Yale by IIT/IIM except for a few places where the rules/laws don’t fit.

This essay presents a remarkable insight into the mentality of students from elite campuses. Being from IIT, I also have observed that students from low to medium income backgrounds find it hard to fit in to the same culture that they came from after four years at IIT. As years go by they increasingly find it hard to talk to anyone who is not ‘one of us’ while at the same time getting ready for a life of branded clothes and scotch/wine drinking which is assured as now they are in the elite club.   

 The most worrying disadvantage of elite education is that if you are afraid to fail you are afraid to take risks.

Time’s top 10 ideas changing the world

Not sure if they are top 10 or not, but they sure are changing the world.

Why we read how we read?

Read an awesome essay about changing reading habits and the way we consume information. For those of you who manage to finish reading it and are interested in the references then here’s the blog post for that.

I feel that initially we are in the mode of reading slowly and taking it all in. But soon we realize that with this slow pace we are lagging behind and missing a lot of information. So we start to find and read what we think is important and relevant and gradually develop a habit about which Nick is talking. Increased instability and less patience are few of the symptoms.

And yes, there should be central service in Windows in which all notifications are registered and we can switch all notifications on and off with just a click. At least that way we would know that I’m supposed to ‘deep read’.

 

Who will be the first to bring iPhone to India?

There’s a fight between Vodafone and Bharti Airtel to be the first to launch iPhone in India. Before Vodafone announced that it’ll be lauching it on August 25th and now Bharti has set its iPhone launch date to August 22nd. Both carriers are still mum on their pricing plans. Well, as soon as the pricing gets out then only most of the users will decide whether to buy from one of the carriers or go to the grey market.

More updates later.

 

Update: Both vodafone and bharti are launching iPhone on august 22 as part of iPhone launch in 20 more countries.

iPhone coming to India!!

Great news for all the apple fans. The iPhone is coming to India with not just one but two carriers. Both Vodafone and Bharti airtel have announced that they will be bring iPhone to India later this year. This is following Apple’s deal in Italy with multiple carriers. I never thought that India will have iPhone before Japan and China and even Canada.

Apart from some tech geeks in India it seems to me that the market is limited for the iPhone. With Nokia having a strong mind share and higher price for iPhones including the import duty and all, the volume will take time to build up. But with India being the 2nd largest mobile market in the world even small percentage share may add up to significant numbers. My guess is that come next month apple will have two versions of the iPhone, one 3G and one the current one at the lower price. With no 3G networks in India and a faint possibility of having one anytime soon the lower end version may give good competition to Nokia Nseries smartphones.

Want to start a startup? Go to startup school

Anyone who is even remotely interested in starting a web startup should definitely watch all of the videos of this years’ Startup School. David Heinemeier of 37 signals has an interesting take on how to build your company which I found the most interesting. His ideas and thoughts turns conventional wisdom on its head. Paul Graham says that a good motivation to keep working on your idea is that people need your product and you are doing good by providing them with this service. Paul Buchheit, creator of GMail, tells you how to listen to and filter advice. There are a lot more which I have not seen, will try to catch up with them in a few days.