CFA Program Practical Skills Modules – now available to all Members A quote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about the Nvidia CEO caught my eye: "he searches for hard problems, solves them, then tries to forget how difficult it all was." Our Members of late must have been taking a leaf out of his playbook. The launch of the 15 hour Practical Skills Modules (PSMs) with the 2024 CFA Program triggered a surge of CFA Charterholder Members asking if they could go back and relive their candidate experience. We didn't want to turn down this unusual request and I am delighted to announce that as of today the answer is ... yes! An email with PSM access instructions has been sent to all Members earlier in the day (we spare them the four and a half hour exam because ... what would we do if they failed?). But why the sudden FOMO and desire for an optional extra grilling? As an equity analyst taking the CFA Program back in the day, Excel modeling seemed like a curious omission. I would spend 12 hours per day modeling in Excel then come home and study the CFA Program for a couple of hours using paper, a pencil and a HP12C. As of 2024, Level I candidates learn three-statement Excel financial modeling best practice courtesy of the “Mozart of modeling” Ian Schnoor, CFA. He takes candidates from a blank Excel spreadsheet all the way through the schedules & waterfalls and intricacies of the cash revolver to the magic moment when the balance sheet balances. In the other PSM at Level I, candidates learn entry-level Python programming fundamentals from Dr. Ryan Ahmad PhD. Topics include variables, data types, loops, functions and libraries with guided coding practice in an embedded Jupyter notebook. It is pitched perfectly for somebody familiar with Excel but a complete newbie to Python. At Level II the renowned James Valentine, CFA, former II ranked analyst, author of “Best Practices for Equity Research Analysts” and former equity analyst training maestro at Morgan Stanley teaches “Analyst Skills”. This is essentially the secrets of how to be a rock-star equity analyst with teachings ranging from how to find proprietary sources of data, how to laser-focus on only material company drivers, dos and donts as you interview management, practical valuation tips, report-writing tips, time management tips and the importance of staying on the offense. He also demos some time-saving analyst use-cases of ChatGPT. At Level II, Dr. Ryan Ahmad goes deeper with a more advanced 15 hour Python module teaching use-cases such as web-scraping, sentiment analysis and building machine learning algorithms leveraging the most commonly used libraries: Pandas, NumPy, MatPlotLib and Seaborn. The course culminates with a portfolio optimization and visualization exercise. Members can now see for themselves that there's never been a better time to be a CFA Program candidate.
I think that the CFA Institute should go one ahead and make it available to non-members as basic financial modelling should form part of the foundation of financial professionals.
Tried to access the modules on the website, but so far they appear to be available only for exam candidates. Is there a distinct entry portal for veteran charter holders?
This is amazing! Can't wait to try the ChatGPT use cases! 💪
This is amazing. Can you please guide me on how a Level III candidate can get access to this?
This is really impressive.
This is excellent. Continuous learning of emerging tools and techniques
Awesome, definitely going to check this out.
What an interesting initiative! Well done 👍
Thanks for posting
Managing Partner of AnalystSolutions
6moRob, I applaud you and CFA Institute for going even further to help members and candidates by offering practical skills programs! As you know, it's been a passion of mine for years.