Now it is finally over!

The date of 11/21/2009 finally arrived and lapsed.. I do not know if I killed FRM or got kill by FRM, but I am happy it is over (if it is over).

Overall I think GARP did a decent job. The exam covered many many deep and detailed concepts but almost all were within the AIM coverage, and it was also quite balanced.. it did not have as much Basel questions as I thought. Basically FRM is much more difficult than I thought when I first registered for the exam. I think it is more difficult than any levels of CFA, but maybe my memory is just short and the most recent pain is the most painful.. It is difficult also because FRM is still not as mature as CFA and there are many unclarities. It looks like the exam question writers are more market practitioners and they sometimes just assume some things in the questions.

AM session was very difficult and challenging. I was once 15 min behind, but finally managed to finished 5-6 minutes earlier. the biggest challenge was time management.. GARP seems to most value how strongly the concepts are embedded in you so you know how to approach/think right away after reading the question.. and just memorizing all the formulas would not help much.. most of the time, i did not have time to think twice. The PM session was more manageable. but i do not feel a lot easier than AM. Maybe I over-thought (yes i realized i did for at least 1 question already), but i have found quite some tricky stuffs hidden in some of the PM questions so one needed to be very careful.. As a result, i took more paced approach, and turned out i was too paced and only had 2-3 minutes after I finished the last question. :(

i have to say i benefited very much from the discussions with David Harper of Bionic Turtle.. For some of the concepts shown in the exam, i could vividly remember David’s explanations in his replies to my questions! Many of the concepts are deeper than they seem to be and i would not be able to understand them without the discussions.. so i felt really lucky when seeing those questions. It pays to ask! And again THANK YOU VERY MUCH DAVID!