Level 2: Post what your remember here...

troubleshooter

Active Member
Does anyone remember the following question:

11) Calculate default rate for 3rd year [(1 - year 2 default rate) * ( 1 - year 3 default rate) = (1 - 0.1051)]
Yes. I think I got this one... default intensity = Prob of Default in year 3/probaility of survival for first 2 years = cumulative default for year 3 minus the same for year 2 divided by (1 - cumulative default upto year 2)...

I am not sure if I read the question on the test incorrectly, but I think the table of probs given for the question above contained cumulative probs, no?
I think you are right on the money in this one. I did exactly the same...
 

hanyongdok

New Member
I agree with hanyongdok. I used the same equation PD3 = Cum PD3 - Cum PD2

i can't remember the exact number but it might be Cum PD3 10.xx- CumPD2 x.xx or kind of some thing like that.... :>
I hope we got correct answer.. i made too much mistake in this exam..:<
 

troubleshooter

Active Member
theoretically, defalut probability in 3 years

= cumulative default prob in 3 years - cumulative defualt prob in 2 years..

i use this equation...
The question was to calculate default intensity in year 3. If you follow Hull, you see exactly how it's done.... PD in year 3/prob. of survival upto 2 years... I am pretty certain about this one...
 

sl

Active Member
Yes. It is not a simple subtraction. We use the survival probabilities.
So basically, default intensity corresponds to unconditional probability?

I used the formula used by David, i.e -1/T(1-ln(avg. cumulative default in 3 yrs)), this didn't give me the required answer and I wondered whether GARP messed up with the answers.
 

sl

Active Member
Hmm, I see a clearer picture emerging as far as my performance in the exam goes. My confidence level has slightly diminished in the wake of some of the answers being posted here to some of the questions. Nevertheless, I felt good after the exam and I am still confident of passing the exam. Let's see what happens.

What I found frustrating while preparing for Level 2, something that I didn't experience while preparing for Level1, which was more streamlined, was the vast number of topics that we had to read. What made that worse was that these topics where scattered across various books/authors. Before you get used to one author's style you are trying to grasp the same concept explained by another author in his/her style. It resulted in a lot of confusion for me as my background is not in finance. I hope GARP realizes this and streamline their curriculum in a manner that makes it easier for the people from the non-finance background to understand these complex topics as well.

David,

Thank you for answering most of my queries. I did learn quite a bit from your posts and the posts from other users here. It seems GARP likes to repeat questions going by the posts made by test takers in the previous years. I am referring to a couple of them, namely the [email protected]% confidence and the BASEL question regarding which model explicitly incorporates diversification. I came across the latter in your PQ. Also, I was able to answer the question on loan equivalent RAROC as I had looked at one of your examples in the slides a couple of days before the exam. Although, you said that GARP would not likely test us on the mechanics of the High-water mark. They did test it, but I was able to answer that one as well because I decided not to leave anything to chance. :)

Suzanne,
Thank you for your support and clicking the 'like' button for almost every post of mine. I think it's quite encouraging;)

Good luck to everyone else who took the test.
 

troubleshooter

Active Member
Hmm, I see a clearer picture emerging as far as my performance in the exam goes. My confidence level has slightly diminished in the wake of some of the answers being posted here to some of the questions. Nevertheless, I felt good after the exam and I am still confident of passing the exam. Let's see what happens.

What I found frustrating while preparing for Level 2, something that I didn't experience while preparing for Level1, which was more streamlined, was the vast number of topics that we had to read. What made that worse was that these topics where scattered across various books/authors. Before you get used to one author's style you are trying to grasp the same concept explained by another author in his/her style. It resulted in a lot of confusion for me as my background is not in finance. I hope GARP realizes this and streamline their curriculum in a manner that makes it easier for the people from the non-finance background to understand these complex topics as well.

David,

Thank you for answering most of my queries. I did learn quite a bit from your posts and the posts from other users here. It seems GARP likes to repeat questions going by the posts made by test takers in the previous years. I am referring to a couple of them, namely the [email protected]% confidence and the BASEL question regarding which model explicitly incorporates diversification. I came across the latter in your PQ. Also, I was able to answer the question on loan equivalent RAROC as I had looked at one of your examples in the slides a couple of days before the exam. Although, you said that GARP would not likely test us on the mechanics of the High-water mark. They did test it, but I was able to answer that one as well because I decided not to leave anything to chance. :)

Suzanne,
Thank you for your support and clicking the 'like' button for almost every post of mine. I think it's quite encouraging;)

Good luck to everyone else who took the test.

I agree with you absolutely on the GARP's curriculum being repetitive and not very well organized. I am beginning to think GARP is really amateruish and FRM is overrated... I remember reading about CDS in at least 4 different sections and Total Return Swap in just about the same number of times. They should set the bar little higher. And then you see questions on the test that are plainly flawed. With 220 M asset having at least 700 M of DV01, what were they thinking? Do they even review their questions for typos and other issues? If they cannot afford to hire reviewers, I am ready volunteer my time to review the questions...
 

JP2932

New Member
Yes. It is not a simple subtraction. We use the survival probabilities.

I am confused though... if they give you a table of CUMULATIVE probs, you can't use Hull's method as is since you'd need marginal probs, no? You'd have to find marginal probs for year 1 and 2 first. So you wouldn't be able to use the probs in the table directly, right? Man, I made way more mistakes than I thought.
 

troubleshooter

Active Member
hull.jpg
I am confused though... if they give you a table of CUMULATIVE probs, you can't use Hull's method as is since you'd need marginal probs, no? You'd have to find marginal probs for year 1 and 2 first. So you wouldn't be able to use the probs in the table directly, right? Man, I made way more mistakes than I thought.
Read the first paragraph from Hull...
 

EIA

Member
Hi,

This is from Andrew Lo

Any quantitative approach to risk management makes use of historical data to some extent.
Risk management for hedge funds is no exception, but there is one aspect of hedge-fund
data that make this endeavor particularly challenging: survivorship bias. Few hedge-fund
databases maintain histories of hedge funds that have shut down, partly for legal reasons,5
and partly because the primary users of these databases are investors seeking to evaluate
existing managers they can invest in. In the few cases where databases do contain \dead"
as well as active funds, studies have concluded that the impact of survivorship bias can be
substantial.6 To see how important survivorship bias can be, consider a collection of n funds
with returns R1; : : :; Rn and de ne their excess return per unit risk as:
Xj = Rj - Rf / Sd j (6)

where Rf is the rate of return on the riskless asset and Sd j is the standard deviation of Rj .
The Xj's are natural performance statistics that investors might consider in evaluating the
funds; observe that the expectation E[Xj ] of these performance statistics is the well-known
Sharpe ratio. For simplicity, assume that these performance statistics are independently and
identically distributed with distribution function F(X).

This is from pg 9 and 10 of Andrew Lo (Hedge Fund Risk Mgt.)

EIA

Its like I made a mistake to have selected D which overstating Sharpe Ratio?

Any take on this. I have seen answers that seems to be Overstatement of Hedge Fund Performance (A).
 

troubleshooter

Active Member
I just remembered one more question. Sorry if it has been posted already.
The question was on POT and it asked what distribution would result when PST threshold is high. The answer was Generalized Pareto Distribution. Easy one but thought I should share it. This thread could be a treasure trove for those taking Level 2 in November. I am suspecting I could be one of them, after boasting earlier in this thread that it was an easy test... hehe...
 

troubleshooter

Active Member
How many questions should we have correct in order to pass?
Only GARP can answer your question. The last time I read up on that it goes like this. They get average score of Top 5% test takers. Then they take some percentange of that, which would be the passing score. Eg., If top 5 test takers on average score 95% and they set 80% (this is a variable GARP sets each year so that they can control the pass rate and is not published), then we should get at least 76% of questions right that translates to 61 questions. I am being quite conservative here. I don't really believe that top 5% would be able to score 95% (76 out of 80 questions), also 80% of top 5% score is a bit on high side as well... So if you think you got 60 out of 80 questions right, I would think you would have a certain pass... I am sure I have screwed up at least 10 questions so my hope is that I did not get more than 20 wrong overall...
 

troubleshooter

Active Member
I just checked the schweser notes and found out that it should be 32.5M. I saw some say that we need to use the LIBOR at t=0 which is 0.25%. That's when the LIBOR remains flat. The question asked about the outflow at the scenario test time which is t=1(The LIBOR at that time is 0.75%) It's the 0.75% we must use when calculating outflows.
The guys who used the .25%, I'm wondering why they calculated the bond payoff at t=1 and use the LIBOR at t=0. A little bit of contradiction smelling here...?..

If it's about the difference 0.75%-0.25% then maybe makes sense. but that's when we compare the outflow with t=0 and t=1. I'm pretty positive that they asked about the outflow at the "scenario time"..uhh....big headache over here
Dennis: Read this from Hull and you will know why... I too screwed this one up... Honestly, Swaps are not covered in detail in Lvl 2 and I just wish my memory from Lvl 1 back in 2009 was better... Hull1.png
 

Suzanne Evans

Well-Known Member
Oh man, I totally read the question wrong. It asked for hazard rate instead of unconditional probs...crap. Thanks. There goes another one. Oh well. No more of this obsessing. This isn't healthy. Thanks!

Hi ji.park1234,

Thank you for your comments. I'd like to point it out that you can change your username from your email address. I'd recommend that you do so for added privacy protection. See this link here for instructions: http://www.bionicturtle.com/news-an...mend-you-change-your-screen-name-in-the-forum

Thanks,
Suzanne
 
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