Pass the Exam with Our CFA^® Study Material

Darren Degraaf, CFA

Darren: Hey, good people. Welcome to Wiley CFA Review. My name is Darren Degraaf, CFA charter holder. This video today is to give you a little bit of a background on the instructors and you’ve already perhaps seen Olinto and Hetherington. So anyway, here’s mine. And I just want to go back to, you know, back to my UNI days in college.

So I went to the University of British Columbia in the Sauder School of Business. Don’t ask me when back before Jesus was a cowboy, is I like to say. And then I started working part time at HSBC Bank. There was a branch here in Vancouver and I actually worked for them for some 13 years. Somehow I managed to dupe them the entire time and in the last four years, I think it was I started teaching CFA Review off the side of my desk.

It first started locally, I just took on one class and I felt a little bit more confident. And then he took on more and more. And then I guess I didn’t totally stink up the room so I was asked to go down to SoCal and we did some info session some corporate visits at, like, PEMCO supercool Best Coast, Huntington Beach. It was amazing.

And that just spiraled into more opportunities. And if you watch Olinto’s video, he talked about a bunch of things that he wanted to be one of them being a pilot. And but unfortunately, I guess he’s not such a good flier. So I had the opportunity. I got the nod to go to India, and I believe Singapore as well. Just one of the probably the best trip I ever went on and was able to teach CFA or promote CFA at that time.

And then fast forward till now, I’ve been teaching for about some 16 years now, and we’re back together Olinto, Hetherington and myself, we have been for a few years now, and we’re perhaps even more excited to keep doing this especially during these interesting times. So, I want to talk about that just a little bit. Our virtual classes, I want you to understand this that think of us as, like your personal trainers.

And what we’re going to do is with our enthusiasm and our energy and our passion, we are going to help you cross that finish line on game day. We’re going to help separate the core from the trivial, i.e. the primary from the secondary stuff.

And then towards the revision or boot camps, some people like to call them, we’re going to get more into sharing our tips and tricks and our collective knowledge. Together I think we have almost like 50 years of training experience altogether.

So I look forward to seeing you folks particularly in our virtual classes. Until then, stay safe and be positive. Never lose your sense of humor.

Peter Olinto

Speaker:  What’s happening, everybody? My name is Peter Olinto. I want to welcome you to the Wiley review for the CFA Exam. I just want to take a brief minute or two just to introduce myself. I’m one of the lead instructors for the level 1 and 2 exams. You’ll see me a lot on the videos online, as well as doing live boot camps and intensive reviews around the world. So hopefully, we’ll get to meet person one day, but just so that you know who I am and my background, I original went to Florida State University because I foolishly thought I had a shot of playing football, quickly realized that was never ever going to happen as I was knocked unconscious the very first practice. So I decided to join the Air Force ROTC because my brother flies jets in the Air Force, F16s, and man, that seemed like an exciting way to earn a living except for the fact that I’m afraid to fly. So when they took me up in a jet, I quickly realized this is never going to happen.

So the advice of an uncle who was a partner, one of the Big Eight accounting firms he suggested that I go to school and get a degree in accounting and the reason I took his advice, he’s a good guy and everything, but he had two really nice homes, two really nice cars, and he had this big fat boat down the Jersey Shore. And I’m like, damn, if that’s kind of money a CPA makes, I want to be a CPA. And that’s a sad but true story. So I got my degree in public accounting. I went to work for Deloitte as an Auditor. I was fortunate to pass all four parts of the CPA exam on the first attempt. A lot of preparation, a lot of dedication, a good study plan. But I was able to do it, then decided to go to law school. I got my law degree from Fordham Law in New York City, then went to work for Ernst & Young to be a tax attorney. Left there after a short time, decided to start my own law practice where I did a lot of tax, real estate, estate planning.

But really, my first opportunity to teach was in law school. I got the opportunity to teach first LSAT then SAT, GMAT, decided why I really like to teach them. Then when I left Ernst I started my own law practice to supplement my income. I started teaching a college. So I taught at Fordham University Graduate Undergraduate School of Business. I taught accounting and a lot of what I teach for the CFA Exam, financial statement analysis, really enjoyed it. I got the opportunity to teach CPA videos and that led to CFA videos. And not only have I been doing this for 20 years online, but I’ve been fortunate to travel all over the world all over Europe, North America, Asia, teaching live classes. So it’s really been great. I enjoy it a lot. Pretty much. What I do now is full time helping candidates prepare and basically what I could tell you is that no smarter than any one of you out there but certainly having passed all these exams and every single one on the first attempt, what I could tell you the difference for me was having a good study plan, sticking to it. These all these exams have such tremendous volume of information. It’s obviously something you can’t cram for. So a good study plan when you spread it out over three or four months, so you studying on average 15 hours or 20 hours a week is very doable.

I will leave you with this, though. It’s a sacrifice, because if you’re working full time and you’re trying to study for the exam, they’re not mutually exclusive. You could do both, but you’re not going to have much of a social life for three or four months, so you really need to be motivated. What’s the end game? What’s the charter going to do for you? And let that motivation push you through because you can and you will do it. So I’m excited. Hopefully, I’ll get to meet you guys live in person. If not, we’ll meet each other obviously online through the videos, and I’m ready to go. So if you’re ready to do a lecture, let’s jump in and do it right now. Best of luck to you. Take care.

David Hetherington

Speaker:  Hey everybody I’m David Hetherington. Welcome to Wiley CFA Exam Prep. I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s actually well over 20 years. I’ve worked around the globe. I actually started in Canada doing this. Extensively in the United States, travelled in Europe, Asia. So I’ve helped candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds. I can’t say I’ve seen every single issue you may run in to but I’ve seen a lot of them. The goal, my goal is to help you succeed in this exam. By way of background. I actually am a practitioner rather than academic, that’s particularly appropriate at the level 3 exam because the level 3 exam is focused on business aspects of being an investment manager. I am actually a native of Florida. I was born and raised there. I went to college in North Carolina, Duke University. I met my wife there. And I had a very strange double major, Economic and religion. Some people will say well those don’t have anything to do with each other. In a sense you’re right but they are actually ways to look at the world and I found that was useful particularly in the CFA program because you look at things from different perspective. You got to be able to kind of change gears, think about a problem from different viewpoints and understand the implications.

After college, I took my first job. I was an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of the US Department of Labor, obviously collecting statistical data. Certainly something you’re familiar with use of that data in the CFA program. After about 13 months, I thought this is not exactly for me. I am looking for something more exciting. I took a job at a small bank at North Carolina as an equity analyst. So I was a trainee. Spent about 6 years there. Evolved a little more into portfolio management and during that period I received my charter. I went through 1, 2, 3. Some of that is because I think I’ve got an aptitude for CFA material. But I also got good advice. I got some good prep and I think the single best tip I’ve ever received is focus on the main issues. Don’t get so long in every minutia. You don’t see what the main points are. That’s true in business, that’s true in the investment profession, and it’s certainly true on the exam.

I also think the CFA Institute is intentionally giving you more information than anyone could be expected to absorb, so you have to make some choices. What are the main points I should try to remember. And overwhelmingly that’s what’s tested and those were the things you will need later in your career. And then after that, I moved in to a larger organization, pretty much similar kinds of roles. During that period, I had the opportunity to start teaching the CFA material. I was an instructor at the University of Winsor Review Course. At that time it was the only review course in the world for CFA. It was a smaller program back then. But the organizer of that program remembered me as a candidate, said, “Yeah, I’ll bring you up as an instructor.” And then within a few years I was one of their lead instructors. I moved in to my second another job, different organization and I decided it was time to specialize. I liked fixed income. I sought out a job in that field and I was fortunate enough to have 3 job offers in 1 week. I took the one I was most interested in.

And during the course of that interview, I remember there was a point where I was asked a question and it was one of those fairly demanding questions. You either know this answer, pretty much the interview’s over. I knew the answer and it was straight out of CFA content. So there’s all kinds of ways this material is going to be useful for you. That continued on, I eventually became I was senior vice-president, managing director of fixed income. So I’ve seen this material from a wide range of settings. About that time I basically decided. You know what kind of done this? It was fun. Of course I was retired, investment business allowed me to do that as a fairly young age. Move to Vermont. I call is the life style trade, more skiing more, cycling but I’ve always enjoyed the CFA material. I enjoyed instruction and that actually continued on and eventually evolved into another full time job.

I’ve continued to be involved in CFA Prep for a very long time. Hey, I’m a CFA nerd. I’m proud of it. Nothing to be embarrassed at. It’s fascinating material, it’s challenging and I really like helping people decipher and understand complex material. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy. I can’t promise that. I can’t promise everything will be intuitive to you. Sometimes intuition takes years and years of experience and some things they’re never intuitive, but they’re still true. So we got to separate those out. I’m excited to be working with Wiley. What I like about Wiley is they’re committed to their success and that should be what you’re interested in.

So think about it, what are your goals here this year? Receive your charter. Advance your career. It’s going to take prep. It’s also going to take good advice. So I want you to block out of your time, focus ion the material and let’s get started.