I'm scheduled to take level 1 in March 2019. I'm using Uppermark to study and find the material to be relatively straightforward. My exposure to alternative investments is relatively minimal in my professional life and I had no educational background in alternatives. Since they recommended 200 hours of study time, I started studying back in May in order to get familiar with the material. It took me ~80 hours to read the book and do all of the MCQ so I think I'm going to be a bit over-prepared on exam day.
To start, none of the material seems unreasonably difficult. I admit it took me a bit of time to wrap my head around some of the strategies and how they're applied. That said, the amount that I had difficulty with compared to the total amount of material seems relatively minor. There are a lot of formulas to memorize and when you first look at them together, it seems very daunting. As you proceed with the material, you'll start to realize that the formulas aren't nearly as complicated as they seemed when you first looked at them.
Ethics is based on the CFA materials and reminded me a lot of the CA ethics exam – some problems are very straightforward while others feel impossible even when you're looking at the book. The biggest section, intro to alternatives, throws in some introductory statistics and finance so you'll be familiar with a lot of the concepts if you took those classes in college. Real assets, private equity, structured products, and risk management were easy to study and didn't take all that much time to march through. Hedge funds had the most difficult sections and never seemed to end.
The designation isn't well respected and people who have the CFA have the advantage of being able to skip the first exam. Many feel that has made the charter “cheap”. Like all designations, it won't guarantee you anything, especially a job. I'm pursuing it strictly for my own personal desire to understand the world of alternative investments. Many have talked me into other (better) ways of learning about AI but I'm going to pursue the designation regardless. If you want a designation that has more respect, the CFA is clearly the way to go. If you want to learn about alternative investments, this is it. If you want to pursue a finance career, an MBA from a well respected school is the way to go.
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