u/Prestigious-Bus-3534

I sat for the May Parts 1 and 2 exams.

Part 1: 75 for certain, 18 toss-ups and 7 air balls - estimated score is 86

Studied for less than 2 weeks

Part 2: 47 for certain, 23 toss-ups and 10 air balls - estimated score is 76 (out of a 100)

Studied for less than a week.

I felt you can pretry much bomb half the calculation questions and still be fine since the problems are equal weighted. The calc questions were impossible - I haven't had this much trouble not being able to find my calculated answer as one of the answer choices since SOA.

There are more than a few cases where you can clearly eliminate (usually) 2 of 4 choices, and given the estimating passing score is around 50-55%, this gets you awful close to passing.

Derivatives:

- If an option is in-the money, its value must be at least the value in the money.

Example: If a call option has a strike of 35 and the stock price is 40, it must be at least 5. Any answer choices less than 5 can be eliminated

- Same goes for interest rate swaps (swap rate vs spot/futures/par rates that are all below/above fixed rate)

- An option before expiry is worth more than zero.

- Up-factor in binomial model exceeds 1. Probability of up cannot exceed 1.

Auto-regressive models:

- They are weighted averages of past and current data, so the number must fall within those two

Fixed income:

- Convexity is always positive

- Dirty price (with accrued interest) is always greater than clean/quoted price

- Interest rates are always positive (in exam setting), so present value is always less than future value.

Others:

- Expected shortfall (TVaR, CVaR) is always smaller than VaR