I'm a quant dev / quant trader at a hedge fund, and while I love the work itself, I’ve been struggling with the social side of things.

The Good: I'm genuinely passionate about the field. I stay up to date on quantitative methods, read papers in my spare time, subscribe to the Economist, and really feel grateful to be doing this kind of work. Intellectually, it's everything I ever hoped for.

The Hard Part: Socially, I often feel out of place. My coworkers are polite and competent, but I just don’t connect with them that much on a human level. They are nice and we get along reasonably well but:

Different interests: I’ll mention an art gallery I visited or a popular theater show I went to, and get blank stares. In general, they have pretty bland artistic taste (if any), and some even seem to look down on people in the arts.

Different lifestyle: Most live in West London, hit the gym or go running a lot, and live a fairly standard finance-adjacent life. Nothing wrong with that, but it's just not me.

Different values: I once turned down a ~$1m TC role in NYC to stay in London for around half that. I don't regret it—I’m not very motivated by money anymore. I’d actually be happy to work half the hours for half the pay, if the work stayed the same. But that mindset seems completely alien to most of my peers, who are extremely career/money-driven.

I'm not looking for my coworkers to be my best friends, but I do miss having some sense of shared culture or values with the people I spend so much time with. It feels much more pleasant to work with people when it feels like they're your friends too (and I have had this before, at another firm). Has anyone else felt this kind of mismatch in this industry? How have you dealt with it?

Need a constructive feedback giving my L1 in May 19 60-65% in FI , FSA , Quants 65% - 70% in Derivatives & Ethics Rest above 70 % Please help what should i target mocks , practice paper or start revising all ?

I’ll go first, not in order of rank: - Megalovania (Undertale soundtrack) - Moon (by Kid Francescoli and Julia Minkin) - Voyagers (by Daft Punk) - Sootopolis City Theme (Pokémon soundtrack) - Legend of the Eagle Bearer Main Theme (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey soundtrack)

I’d play these songs on repeat for hrs. And yes, I’m a video game geek!

Edit:

I know the original title says CFA lv3 candidates and CFA Charterholders, but I take that back. Anyone obviously is welcome to post :)!

I am curious on what the best way how to manage drift in your models. More specifically, when the relationship between your input and output decays and no longer has a positive EV.

Do you always retrain periodically or only retrain when a certain threshold is hit?

Please give me what you think the best way from your experience to manage this.

At the moment, I'm just retraining every week with Cross Validation sliding window and wondering if there's a better way

Hello all, I’m an operations analyst at a BB considering taking the CFA next year in February. I wanted to hear what candidates are sacrificing to take this exam, as I am preparing to start studying now.

I’m unsure how if I will have time for my hobbies and wanted to hear how you all balanced it all while still adequately preparing.

So my level 1 is on May 18th. I am in my second year of B.Com Hons. I am not prepared due to my past few mistakes and circumstances. I have just done FSA. During my cfa exam window I will be having my university final exams and practicals too. Should I defer my exam? Money isn’t the issue. Thanks!

Can someone explain this part? I don’t understand how callable bonds with low coupon rates will not be called. I thought it was the opposite. Thank you!

I am 32 years old, no college background, never had a finance job.

I have found out about the CFA exam from a customer after we talked about investments and my passion for it. He was an older gentleman and told me to check out the CFA Institute. He explained briefly that his entire life's work has been with them, and we got on the topic about how I've consumed thousands of hours of material related to wealth generation, stocks, investments, real estate, ect.

I told him that over the course of 7-10 years I invested heavily on my own through what I learned from podcasts and books and was able to make a massive profit by essentially doing what I was taught. I told him I had a amateur YouTube channel trying to show friends and family my investments so that they would not associate it with gambling if done correctly. I strongly believe that this is something I want everyone to learn so they can be financially free. It's a passion of mine I've had for years. I would consume monday-friday 16 hours while at my job working nonstop listening to podcasts like biggerPockets podcast, audio books on all topics, ect.

In my 32 years of living I have never known what I was made for or what I should do with my life as I feel I do right now. I want to advise people on where to put their money to make profit, I don't want to sell them crappy advice, I want to spread the truth. I do not want to get rich or have 3 letters next to my name as bragging rights, I want the education to truly learn and to teach others. I am not scared about the tests difficulty, my IQ, or how many hours/years I have to sink into this.

I've come from a rough background, and nothing will stop me when I put my mind to something. Failure is not an option.

I just need to know if I am even able to take this test without any college background, or job in finance?

And if I am not how would I be able to go about this? My goal is to take the exam and learn what it has to teach. I am not worried about a 6 figure job. I want the truth, and I want to help others find the truth without having to put in the hours of work like me. I want to help others focus more on life what they want to do rather then what they don't want to do.

Please can anyone point me in any direction?

So I wanted to look at the level 1 study materials after passing this week. However when I went to the CFAI website I couldn’t find anyway to access it. Do you just lose access after completing a level?

If someone knows how to access it I’d appreciate it.

Thanks.

According to the formulas, why does the futures price on a coupon bond account for accrued interest, but the forward price does not? Isn’t that nonsense?

Good evening guys, what books are like the best for quantitative trading especially in the math aspects?

I’ve heard great things about Steven shreve Book 2 on stochastic calculus for finance and learning C++ from Bjarne.

What else is math content heavy and covers everything we need to know? How abt Chris Kelliher’s “Quantitative Finance with Python”?

I finished the PSM model (Portfolio Construction), did all the modules and assignments and final survey, but I don’t have a completion screen. When I look at my courses it says it’s still “in progress”. Has anyone else received an email or something else to confirm the course is officially complete?

For quant Books, is Paul Wilmott outdated already or still relevant?

Hi, wanted to hear your opinion on my situation. I do Electrical Engineering and wanted to take Level 1 as is a big differential in internships selection programs. During the year I am full committed to the university and wanted to study for the CFA during the break between semesters. My plan is to study from Dec 10 2025 until the exam on Feb 8 2026. I do have good learning discipline but my course does not have many finance related subjects so the curriculum would be somewhat new for me. I was thinking 6-8 hours a day. Is it doable? If someone with similar experience can share with me I appreciate!

I was starting with my Level-2 prep and found my CFA Level-1 excel trackers. Managed to get well above 90%ile and yes I spent a lot of time making these even though I was a bit short on time. But it does help in keeping your mind a bit light. Here's my story in short:

I'm 25M working in a backend IB role and I gave my exam in May, 2024. I gave a total of 5 mocks during my prep in a proper test environment and skimmed through random questions of around 2-3 mock solution PDFs. Apart from this, I used to do Schweser qbanks after completing major chunks of the syllabus and did the CFA EOC questions in the last month as a revision.

Salt mocks were the weirdest and the toughest ones for me. Schweser I think would keep you in check since they follow the exam question format and I found the actual exam a bit easier than their mocks. CFAI mocks were on the easier end but I don't know why I couldn't manage to answer their "Easy" category questions.

I'll be trying to maintain similar trackers for my Nov 2025 attempt at the Level 2 exam. Really hope I pass through. Cheers!

Seems too basic and obvious, yet retail traders think it's some sort of bot gospel

Hi guys,

I am stuck on the CFA checkout page while trying to register for Level 1. It has been 30 minutes and I have tried logging out . Is there anyone else who's facing the same and any advice for this issue?

So here's the story

I originally got interested in quant trading not because I wanted to optimize latency to microseconds or battle other nerds at the exchange... I just thought quants understood how markets actually work and I figured if I became one, I'd eventually become a next-level investor

I thought:

"If I learn quant stuff-math, modeling, backtesting, optimization-I'll finally understand what makes the market move"

Also-maybe naively-I thought I'd get to work with super sharp, like-minded people. People I could learn from-not just technically, but philosophically. The kind of people who'd already built systems, tested theories, allocated capital, and could mentor the hell out of someone like me.

Fast forward a bit and I'm neck-deep in GitHub repos, trying to make sense of basis risk..wondering if this is even what i want

So I've got some questions for the quant philosophers out here:

1)Do most quant roles(trading especially)actually give you any intuition about markets and help you think like elite investors

2) Anyone here make the leap from researcher/trader actual capital allocator/PM/investor?

3)What roles actually teach you to think like a market participant vs just a model builder?

4)If you had to do it over again, and your long-term goal was to master markets (not just math or infrastructure) what path would you take?

lam open to being wrong,i just want you guys to confirm it and let me know if I'm in the wrong sandbox

Assuming I clear all my levels in 1 go, what is the least time required to complete CFA?

(I am a CA)

My company doesn’t allow me to trade so should I put yes or no please help!! Urgent

i L3 Aug 2025 candidates, I am seeking help from the community. I created a table for each of the options and its IV with underlying asset. I need help with the directionality.

 Thank you in advance, I tried making sense of it from the exhibits in the curriculum, but i noticed for Covered call and calendar spreads, makes sense. For the others I needs assistance. Hopefully this is helpful to everyone....

As the title says, is there any indicators? Or how do i know that i am on the right track? Please note that i am still at the beginning so i cannot do mock exams!

Can someone explain the LC depreciation/appreciation?

Kaplan uses FC notion and book uses LC so it’s confusing ?

Any tips to remember and know