Exam Feedback November 2016 Part 1 Exam Feedback

[Martin B]

any one know when FRM result released ?

The last reminder email from GARP says the following:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
When do I learn if I passed or not?
Exam results – pass or fail – will be sent via email to all candidates no later than January 3, 2017.

 

[[email protected]]

Was it something about expected losses being included as cost for credit cards?

ya right. what was the answer?

 

[Linghan]

I felt like I need to be more strict to myself when doing mocks!!! I was running out of time checking my work, by the time I was about to check the last few question they already announced times up!!!! I feel like if I stick with bionic turtle more and have time to read through each chapter carefully it shouldn't be a hard test at all nor anyone use this forum!!! Well..just have my fingered crossed! )

 

[trigg989]

This was my first time sitting for Part I. Holy cow it was difficult. I will say though that I guess no matter how I do, I will make sure to know each topic forwards and backwards and sideways because I did not expect some of those questions to be asked that way.

Also picked the perfect day to blank on the binomial model. :-(

 

[madhurreen]

Does anybody remember the anwer for null hypothesis questn based on t test calculatd vs t criticl... i was confused between two options whether to reject null hypothesis or cannot reject.. was t calcultd more than t critical value?

 

[gbiradar]

Weren't we supposed to make it vega and gamma neutral before making it delta neutral?
So answer shouldn't be 3200 I guess.. I couldn't solve it but I thought definitely not 3200..

Yes, i think the answer was 3200.

I remember doing similar question on BT question sheet. I kept going on this question as I was determined to get it correct as it was just a simple simultaneous equation.

I was quite worried when the gamma vega values were quite high though but the numbers were nice so I am quite confident the answer was 3200.[/QUOTE

 

[gbiradar]

I wish I had seen May 2016 feedback thread before exam :-(.. Some guy recalled 35 questions and most of those questions were repeated

People who wrote FRM part 1 in may and reappeared yesterday are telling that May paper was way more difficult. Doesn't it imply we would have a higher Minimum Passing Score(MPS) this time? what's the MPS in general for FRM? For CFA in know it's approximately 68-70%. Anyone knows anything for FRM?

 

[marque]

Harumph! so yes a couple of curve balls. I blew up on my time management. a lot less of call put parity and bsm than expected.
A lot more fx and ul questions.
Oddball currencies. Inr. A South American. jpy.
Lot less var.
A lot more of expected shortfall.
My spotting ish bit me on the bum. A bit more practice across more of the key topics would have had me more comfortable.
There was gamma delta hedge question that threw me because they did not say what the position was? just gave deltas and gamma of two Options?
A commodity forward with convenience yield that asked at which point would pay to hold more inventory. I could not get my head around that one. in my mind it would be when the cy exceeds the rf and storage. none of the prices given tied to that.
Rate my chances as very slim to praying for a miracle.
There was a Brexit fx question which had me chuckling. Do we get Trump ones next Year!
And thanks to BT. Without them I would rate my chances as zero. Was speaking to another candidate on his second exam afterwards who was stumped by the ul question and not knowing how to calculate variance on the Pd. Wow. Poor guy. David drums that one into all of us.

I remember the deltas and gamma and vega with two options, they have a portfolio with a starting -2000 Gamma, -3000 Vega, with those two option they make it Gamma and Vega neutral, but Still need something to make Delta neutral, then the correct answer is the right amount of stock (or future, cant remember) to make Delta neutral.

 

[Danilo Castaneda]

A lot of curve balls to be honest... I failed May's test and have to admit i felt way more prepared this time thanks to BT... However, not sure if I pass... seems like they would have to lower the cut off a lot.
Good luck guys!

 

[ab82]

Pretty much what people have mentioned here. It was a very poor way to start an exam - waiting outside in the cold for about 30/40 minutes. Also poorly organised; the instructor was explaining what we needed to do with the exam paper when many of us still had not received the paper yet! With regards to the exam content, a lot of EL and mortgage related questions. Very little of the topic material from GARP's practice papers for 2013, 2014, and 2016 were covered in this exam - I think the practice papers did not serve as a guideline as they were supposed to. For example, in the GARP practice papers, there were no questions on EL, one mortgage related question, Poisson distribution, SWAPs, Akike Info Criterion.

I got about 80% on the practice papers but I'm not feeling confident at all about my chances from yesterday. Typically what would be the pass rate? Has it ever average in the mid 40s previously? I'm expecting a 50 if I'm lucky.

 

[[email protected]]

Was simply shocked to see the bad organisation at wembley...my worst exam experience ever. Is there any particular reason why they dont provide like an separate booklet for us to do our calculations on? Its very difficult for people with big handwriting.

 

[marque]

I remembered there was a question about total sum of squares, it gave us an y_hat equation (y_hat=6.89*x+56.2, can't remember numbers clearly) and said TSS is 2,000, rho is a given number, then ask what is R^2.

Does anyone how to do that?

 

[Linghan]

I hope everyone can get some rest from the test and spend more time with your family, your loved ones and be thankful for their support and encouragement during the hardest time!!! Don't worry too much about things in the past, it will be alright eventually no matter pass or not!!

 

[tandronova]

I hope everyone can get some rest from the test and spend more time with your family, your loved ones and be thankful for their support and encouragement during the hardest time!!! Don't worry too much about things in the past, it will be alright eventually no matter pass or not!!

Great point, Linghan!

 

[gbiradar]

It was - 96000 vega not sure gamma - 1200 something... Two options were 0.8 gamma, 15 vega and 0.4 gamma, 30 vega.. So 3200 of second option would have neutralised vega but it would have increased gamma.. So we needed to use combination of two options ..

I remember the deltas and gamma and vega with two options, they have a portfolio with a starting -2000 Gamma, -3000 Vega, with those two option they make it Gamma and Vega neutral, but Still need something to make Delta neutral, then the correct answer is the right amount of stock (or future, cant remember) to make Delta neutral.

 

[dilahab8408]

We hope that everyone did well on the exam! We would love to hear any feedback that you have. How did it go? Did you encounter unexpected questions? Thank you in advance for any feedback you can provide!

It was very difficult. I felt prepared initially because I watched all BT videos, review videos, study notes and practice questions, and downloaded all the BT mocks and did all of them in less than 4 hours, and then I practised with Schweser practice questions, and scored 70% ish, and then I did the GARP mock and scored about 65%. And then on the real exam, I blanked out on Saturday morning, I didnt have a good start to the paper since the early questions were quite challenging already. Im not sure if everyone had the same order of questions though. I think that Schweser questions were do-able and didnt really match the difficulty of the real exam, meanwhile most BT questions were more difficult than the real exam. So, although the difficulty of the exam is between Schweser and BT practice questions, the key factor is time! 100 questions in 4 hours, translating it into 2.4 minutes per question, I genuinely feel that most questions during the exam needed more than that!

Like some people said, the theory questions were just horrible and needed more than 2.4 minutes to think through. And I remember they made a mistake in their question and the corresponding answer where they asked about confidence LEVEL and time period but in the answer, it talked about confidence INTERVAL and time period. They didnt make the quantitative questions any easier either, I must say GARP did really well in terms of challenging the exam takers, haha.

Honestly, I didnt have the time to finish all 100 questions unfortunately and had to guess some (well, more than some). And more often than not, I went through a lengthy calculation only to find that my answer matched none of the choices. Lol! I am really irritated because I felt that I was well prepared but the exam proved me otherwise. The management of the exam was not really good. I wanted to bring in earplugs, and was told by the invigilator "better not", although GARP policy said I actually could. Throughout the exam, I was more nervous about violating any rule (including disruptive behaviour because my stomach was grumbling too much at that time, come on, exam at 8am lol) that I might have forgotten while trying to focus on exam. Overall, I was not comfortable at all to sit for the exam hahaha. I just hope that I pass!

 

[mkh]

J

any one know when FRM result released ?

Jan 3rd, we got mail from garp

 

[Nicole Seaman]

Pretty much what people have mentioned here. It was a very poor way to start an exam - waiting outside in the cold for about 30/40 minutes. Also poorly organised; the instructor was explaining what we needed to do with the exam paper when many of us still had not received the paper yet! With regards to the exam content, a lot of EL and mortgage related questions. Very little of the topic material from GARP's practice papers for 2013, 2014, and 2016 were covered in this exam - I think the practice papers did not serve as a guideline as they were supposed to. For example, in the GARP practice papers, there were no questions on EL, one mortgage related question, Poisson distribution, SWAPs, Akike Info Criterion.

I got about 80% on the practice papers but I'm not feeling confident at all about my chances from yesterday. Typically what would be the pass rate? Has it ever average in the mid 40s previously? I'm expecting a 50 if I'm lucky.

Hello @ab82

Here is a great post by David about the historical pass rates: https://forum.bionicturtle.com/threads/may-2016-part-1-exam-feedback.9609/page-13#post-43490. Hope this helps to answer your question!

Nicole

 

[kansal7mba]

I failed in May exam and not sure if I would pass now. The pattern of exam was very different this time vs in May.
Multiple concepts were clubbed together this time. I felt the questions in May exam were simpler (I wasn't prepared for May exam). Didn't subscribe to BT or Schweser in May.

I remember the Poisson question where Probability was not given. I think it said there is 3 out of 1000 times chances so PROB should be .003 (realized it later).
Lot of Bond questions with added complexity. Even the Delta hedge question wasn't simple.
My answer for UL of 2 asset portfolio wasn't matching any of the 4. Did we had to calculate the UL for the 2 assets again. I though it was given.
There were few questions on ES and UL/EL.

I felt I passed when I would pass after attempting first 50 questions but it quickly evaporated seeing the next 50 questions.
Does someone know how to manage time better? I think doing numericals first helps as you are fresh. Any thoughts?
I have cleared CFA level 1 and felt FRM paper is harder and there is lot of variation in question pattern.
GARP practice test is not even close to what we see in the real exam. This is not the case with CFA.

 

[olgenue]

Really need to know the concepts in and out well. I panicked at the Binomial Tree because in my preparation I thought how hard can those questions be? I even memorized all the formulae related to that topic only to realize that the USD/CAD question is not as straightforward as a European call option valuation question. I applied the discount factor wrongly. Instead of letting the discount factor be exp(-rt) i let it be exp-(r-rf).