The Certification for Securities Specialist Course officially started on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 and I was officially kind of disoriented. To find myself studying again and leafing thru pages of course materials seemed to me like an unusual dream sequence in "Inception". I felt like pinching myself to wake up but then again this is my new reality, my here and now, for me to become a full-fledge stock trader and investor. This is my choice. There is no escaping it.
I surveyed the room and it was filled with youthful expectations of wannabe traders. I guess the age distribution is skewed to the right with me and few others on the right tailend. There are more male participants in the class of more than fifty (50) and that is tellling me that this might be a good sampling representation of the percentage of traders in this country. I guess, males are just more risk-takers than females.
The class is a good mixture of young professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, rich kids and newly-retired professionals. Yes there are three of us there who had just signed up for early retirement from our separate employments. While I do not particularly relish at that distinction, having two other "retirees" in the class made me feel right at home. One participant is a president of his own real estate company and was a former classmate at the UP MBA school. Another is a SVP at HSBC Securities Division.
The first module - Quantitative Methods of Finance and Statistics - ran for three days. I have taken some courses in Finance and Statistics in UP back then but to be relearning these concepts and computing the variances, standard deviation, covariances, linear correlation, among others all in three days is cramping too much. I was glad to know, however, that we can use our excel application in computing these statistics or I would have jumped out of the window for being unable to memorize the different formulas and using the functions of a scientific calculator.
The Program has rigid requirements for us to be certified as Securities Specialist - must attend 90% of all classes, must pass all homeworks and end-of-module- quizzes and must pass the comprehensive exam. We were told on our first day that about 30%-40% of participants are not certified at the end of the course. Either, they were unable to attend 90% of the sessions or fail the quizzes or the comprehensive exam. This chilling message may have affected some of the participants that about two-four of them did not anymore show up the following day.
So far, I think I am doing well except for the instance when I was unable to answer the remaining question in our quiz last Saturday on the risk of a two-asset portfolio. I ran my numbers five times and I got the same answer only to find out I was wrong. My mistake was that I got too complacent early on since I studied these concepts and formulas before. I have to reboot and committed to myself that I will give each module equal and undivided attention. Focus and practice breed success. That is all for now as I have to go back and study ahead for our next module - Acccounting.
I surveyed the room and it was filled with youthful expectations of wannabe traders. I guess the age distribution is skewed to the right with me and few others on the right tailend. There are more male participants in the class of more than fifty (50) and that is tellling me that this might be a good sampling representation of the percentage of traders in this country. I guess, males are just more risk-takers than females.
The class is a good mixture of young professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, rich kids and newly-retired professionals. Yes there are three of us there who had just signed up for early retirement from our separate employments. While I do not particularly relish at that distinction, having two other "retirees" in the class made me feel right at home. One participant is a president of his own real estate company and was a former classmate at the UP MBA school. Another is a SVP at HSBC Securities Division.
The first module - Quantitative Methods of Finance and Statistics - ran for three days. I have taken some courses in Finance and Statistics in UP back then but to be relearning these concepts and computing the variances, standard deviation, covariances, linear correlation, among others all in three days is cramping too much. I was glad to know, however, that we can use our excel application in computing these statistics or I would have jumped out of the window for being unable to memorize the different formulas and using the functions of a scientific calculator.
The Program has rigid requirements for us to be certified as Securities Specialist - must attend 90% of all classes, must pass all homeworks and end-of-module- quizzes and must pass the comprehensive exam. We were told on our first day that about 30%-40% of participants are not certified at the end of the course. Either, they were unable to attend 90% of the sessions or fail the quizzes or the comprehensive exam. This chilling message may have affected some of the participants that about two-four of them did not anymore show up the following day.
So far, I think I am doing well except for the instance when I was unable to answer the remaining question in our quiz last Saturday on the risk of a two-asset portfolio. I ran my numbers five times and I got the same answer only to find out I was wrong. My mistake was that I got too complacent early on since I studied these concepts and formulas before. I have to reboot and committed to myself that I will give each module equal and undivided attention. Focus and practice breed success. That is all for now as I have to go back and study ahead for our next module - Acccounting.
No comments:
Post a Comment