FRM Exam Questions Financial Markets and Products
Financial Markets and products is probably one of the trickiest topics of FRM Exam. It covers a wide range of topics – From Introduction of financial markets to Options and Futures, Swaps, Fixed Income Securities and hedging! If we look at the readings assigned to this topic, we find that it has a lot of readings – 10 chapters of John Hull, Corporate Bonds from Frank Fabozzi, 2 chapters from Saunders and 2 readings from commodity derivatives. Similar is the weight assigned to Financial markets and products section – 30% for level I and 15% for full Examination! In a nut shell, this section is a key section as far as FRM Exam is concerned!
Originally this section was clubbed in the market risk section of FRM Exam (Till 2008). So analyzing the history of this section becomes a little difficult. Nonetheless, if we map the learning objectives to last year’s examinations, we can find the pattern and some of the low hanging fruit.

Pristine organized a free one hour Webinar (live instruction training) on Value at Risk (VaR). The objective of the Webinar was to explain the concept of “Value at Risk” and its application in risk management context and FRM Examination.
Value at Risk is the most important concept in Valuation and Risk Modeling section as it forms the basic building block for concepts in measuring Risk. It gives the managers a handle on the risk that their firm is undertaking and can help in capital allocation and investment decision making.
In FRM Exam you can expect 7-10 questions on VaR and many more related concepts.

FRM FREE Preparation for Important Topics-Quantitative Analysis
Pristine organized a free 1 hr Webinar (live instruction training) on Quantitative Analysis. The objective of the Webinar was to explain the concept of “Normal Distribution” and its application in VAR. Normal distribution (ND) is the most important concept on Quantitative Analysis section as it forms the basic building block for many concepts in Risk Management, Hypothesis Testing, Regression Analysis, Pricing of Derivatives and VAR.
In FRM Exam you can expect 2 to 3 questions on ND and 15 to 20 questions on VaR and related concepts.

CFA Dec 2009 Exam Allowed In India
CFA Institute has been allowed to conduct the CFA Exam in India in Dec 2009. CFA is premier certification in finance and is conducted by AIMR in USA. There is a legal dispute between CFA (USA) and ICFAI (which conducted CFA in India), because of which CFA (USA) Exam is sometimes not conducted in India. This is a great opportunity for Indian students to give the exam in India and save on the confusion that normally prevails till the last moment and save on the cost of traveling as well.
Now students in India can concentrate on preparing well for the exam, which is scheduled to be taken on 5th Dec. 2009. There are approximately 4 months to prepare for the examination, and if students study hard during this time, they would definitely be able to clear the examination.

FRM-Exam-Questions-Formula-Based
As we have seen that quite a lot of portion of FRM Exam is based on numerical calculations and some of those questions are tough as well. We thought that it is best to find a mix of questions, that are purely formula based (And if you know the formula, you can easily do them) and how many require deeper understanding of material and require atleast a few combinations of formulas and concepts (maybe interpreting the data, and finding the relevant values to be used and then combining 2-3 formulas to get to the result).
If we look at the FRM Exam Practice Paper 2009, we find that 50% of the questions are purely formula based questions. This is good news!

FRM-Exam-Quantitative-Analysis-Questions
One of the most important and fundamental concepts in Risk Management and modeling is Mathematics (Probability) and Statistics! Probability defines the chance of events and is the most basic tool for modeling risk. Statistics gets into rigorous analysis and creates models for prediction. GARP gives a good weight to Quantitative Analysis with 20% weight for FRM level I and 10% weight for FRM Full Exam.
This weight might not appear significant, but if we look closely, most of the questions in Value at Risk (VaR) and Credit Risk (those involving calculation of probability of default, correlations, etc.) are again based on the quantitative analysis part. It would not be wrong to say that most of the syllabus (including financial markets and products and market risk) hinges upon clear understanding of quantitative analysis, probability and statistics.

FRM-Questions-Numerical-vs-theoretical
There has been debate about the kind of questions asked in FRM Exam. If you meet 100 people who have appeared in the examination, 50 would say that the mix is more skewed towards theoretical questions and 50 would say that it is more towards numerical problems. Getting the right strategy for FRM exam preparation tends to be difficult because of this confusion.

Job Profile of an Equity Researcher
Typical Day:
Equity research analysts start their day by attending various conference calls with firm’s traders and brokers, before the markets open. In these calls they discuss and share the investment recommendations for clients. They have to prepare the research reports and equity recommendations. To this end they spend a good part of the day doing research on the sector or industry or companies they cover. An analyst has to spend a great deal of time communicating with company’s management, retail sales force etc. To collect the information they often travel to visit companies and attend various industry conferences. They then analyze the information collected to review financial statements to estimate earnings and profits of the company. Using this knowledge they prepare detail report with recommendations and complex financial models. Thus the day begins quite early but extends late into the night and the equity research staff needs to keep themselves informed with the latest updates.

Job profile of a Merchant Banker
Typical Day:
Investment bankers at associate level spend a lot of time traveling to various clients to present ideas and work on developing financial plans i.e proposing and negotiating deals etc and strategies for clients. Also the analysts and associates are required to work a lot on presentation material. All this work can appear to be very time consuming. A typical day for an investment banker is to start at nine in the morning and he needs to work fairly consistently until midnight. Though it may be a five day workweek but you must be prepared to work on the weekends as well. When the deal is on you may be required to work all nights, sometimes a couple of nights on a go. Working upto 2 or 3 a.m. is quite usual. Thus the schedule is demanding and work comes before the personal life.

Job Profile of a Management Consultant
Typical Day:
Most consultants begin around 9 in the morning and usually leave the office by 10-11pm. The day begins with checking the voicemails and replying to emails followed by brief news update. Meeting with client teams, presentations and analysis of facts and figures consumes most of the day. The day is generally hectic. In most firms, consultants spend 4 days of the week (Mon-Thrus) at the client site and Friday at their own office but the travel policy varies from from to firm to firm and some may require travel to client site only At the beginning and at the end and occasionally in between if required, Usually, consultants work for 60-80 hours a week.