Any Feedback on FRM 2009 Exam ?

[spenserzhou]

I am confident of 80(85% - 90% to be correct), 40 educated guess with 50% to be wrong, and reset 20 with at least 75% to be wrong (very bad educated guess..... :-() Hope I can pass. get frustrated with the preparation of the exam...

 

[mdecav]

Dave,

The slowness of the site has been that way since July when I joined. It was one of the reasons why I didn't join up at first. My home computer is a little old, but the website also kills the RAM on my computer even when I still have IE open after I've visited the site. I'll be sure to update the comment once the issues go away...

Mike

 

[troubleshooter]

Just wanted to share with you all GARP's response to questions related to Box Spread and the incomplete question on binomial tree.

Questions:
1. There was a question on box spread. Box spread, though in John Hull textbook, is clearly not in curriculum as per FRM AIMs.
2. There was a question on probability tree that was incomplete. At the last part of the question, it did not specify which way the tree went.

GARP's response:
1. The AIMS do have: “Describe and explain the use and payoff functions of spread strategies” and then gives some examples. Because box spreads were not listed in the examples does not imply that they are not part of the curriculum. They are covered in the reading.

2. After the exam, we always get feedback from candidates about potentially problematic questions. We check each of these questions closely and if we agree that there is a problem with the questions, we drop it from the exam scoring. I will make sure we check the question you referenced. Thanks for pointing this out.

Further Question:
Thanks for the response. For my Level II preparations, I guess this would mean that I should take the assigned readings in whole as the testable material and regard AIMs as only a guidance and not as an exhaustive and explicit listing of testable material. Would this be correct?

GARP's response:
Yes, I would view all the reading material as testable unless we have explicitly said that a section will not be tested, and use the AIMS to guide your studying. I can say confidently that if you are comfortable with the AIMS, you will not have trouble passing this exam even if there are a few questions that are loosely connected to the AIMS. We have pushed the exam development in this direction over the last few years and will continue to do so.

 

[mdecav]

I wonder if the box spread question was put in the exam on purpose. Had I known this was the process I would've studied it.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

@NewTurtle - Thanks for sharing GARP's response. The answer with respect to box spread is very interesting. (The AIM reads "Describe and explain the use and payoff functions of spread strategies, including bull spread, bear spread, calendar spread, butterfly spread, and diagonal spread.")

I am grateful for your follow-up question ("I guess this would mean that I should take the assigned readings in whole as the testable material and regard AIMs as only a guidance and not as an exhaustive and explicit listing of testable material"). I think GARP's response here ("I would view all the reading material as testable unless we have explicitly said that a section will not be tested") is the most explicit statement I have read; it would appear to represent the current evolution. So, very good to know!

@mdecav - Re: "I wonder if the box spread question was put in the exam on purpose. Had I known this was the process I would’ve studied it. "
And similarly, if it had been listed on the AIMs, I would have built an XLS and devoted a slide to it ...

David

 

[benoit16]

I wonder if the box spread question was put in the exam on purpose. Had I known this was the process I would've studied it.​

Hello mdecav,

Honestly, one big challenge with the full FRM is to learn the big amount of material covered
(including to know, by hart, details like in BII aims).

Mastering all the aims is already a tough part.
Trying to focus on all the other non well defined aims would not be efficient.
You would loose lots of time for a very small result.

This spread box question makes me think of the Poisson question last year.
It was not in the aim but it went through the test.

We should not worry about these questions as they are not frequent.
They are also removed from the grading after Garp realizes it is not mastered by the students
(because it was not in the AIM).

See you.

 

[troubleshooter]

I would take questions like the one on the box spread as the one designed to get you wrong and most likely inavertently on GARP's part. I seriously do not believe they do this on purpose and they just want to appear as if they did ex-post. Unless you are in the business of creating box spreads everyday, you would not know answer to it as most likely you would have skipped it from the readings. So I would not worry too much about what's NOT in the AIMs even if there are slim chances of them appearing in the test. Focussing on AIMs is time consuming enough. I am baffled by their answer on the testability of the reading material as the whole, kind of beats the purpose of AIMs. May be they should stop publishing AIMS and should just publish what is not testable from the reading material rather than what is...

Regarding the probability tree question, I think they would have to exclude it but I don't believe it is a transparent process so there is no way for us to know what they did. Obviously, they would not want too much focus on such issues as it shows their own exposure to operations risk.

Best of luck to everyone.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

We (all the training providers) had a conference call with GARP this morning and Chris Donahue (GARP Research Director) essentially reiterated the point from NewTurtle's response; i.e., ”I would view all the reading material as testable unless we have explicitly said that a section will not be tested”
... a couple of us on the call noted this (a lack of 100% 1:1 correspondence between AIMS and exam questions) makes preparation even more challenging.

So my interpretation (and the following starts "merely my own opinion," not something GARP has explicitly conveyed), in regard to the box spread example, I happen to agree with NewTurtle (it is basically inadvertent but the "new philosophy" allows for invadvertent deviations from the AIM). The reason this happens is simply that GARP does not start their process (to my knowledge) by going to the source reading (or AIMS) to generate the question. What i mean is, given that GARP aspires to real-world, practitioner-oriented questions, they could do this:

1. source questions and then vet them for realism with practioners. But it is my understanding this is NOT the process, rather:
2. They source questions from practioners (and committee members, etc) first, then vet them "against" the source readings

In this way, the box spread questions was likely externally sourced and then vetted against the Hull Chapter. (is it in the chapter? yes. okay, we can use). You can seek how some tracking error (AIM versus exam) might be expected. Ergo, it is my understanding the box spread question WILL BE RETAINED.

I also agree with NewTurtle that it rasies the question, what is the purpose of the AIMS? My current understanding is: they (AIMS) are indeed the roadmap, knowing them is (roughly) necessary but may not be sufficient in a limited number of instances (but they will try to cap the number of these "off AIM" instances, such that, in aggregate, as Chris suggested today, it really shouldn't convert a pass to a fail).

David

 

[benoit16]

We (all the training providers) had a conference call with GARP this morning and Chris Donahue (GARP Research Director) essentially reiterated the point from NewTurtle's response; i.e., ”I would view all the reading material as testable unless we have explicitly said that a section will not be tested”
​

Good morning,

This may explain why Garp has just sent an FRM Candidate Survey today.

I have spent to 20 minutes to fill this survey.
Unfortunately when I submitted I got:
---
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80040e10'

Procedure or function 'get_QuestionnaireEntry' expects parameter '@FK_PID', which was not supplied.

C:\GARP\WWW\GARPEKTRON1\SURVEY\../lib/data/Questionnaire.asp, line 199
---

The garp web server may have not digested well my answers.

See you.

 

[Raksha Bhagat]

finally the count down for the results begin

 

[riskalm]

testing time zone of bionic turtle

 

[Raksha Bhagat]

hmm. we have 11 hours to go in India

 

[benoit16]

2009 FRM Candidate Results will be emailed to the same email address from your profile, no later than Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 5:00pm (New York time).​

Good afternoon,

From what is indicated on the garp web server, we should get the results during the next four hours.

Good luck.

 

[Raksha Bhagat]

hey guys any news of the results

 

[Raksha Bhagat]

David how long for the results

 

[harifrm1980]

Did anyone get the result ?

 

[littlez]

not yet.

 

[harifrm1980]

Its more than 5 o clock New York time... ..waiting since afternoon.....

 

[spenserzhou]

I havent either......any one has the result?

 

[orientao]

Can GARP at least try to act professinally? I am really shocked how unprofessional they look like!