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CAP2 Exams

Mark1916

Hi,

Thought id set up a thread so people can air their views, problems, tips etc for the up comming exams!

Ill start off and say I think Cash Flows are a high possibility for the Financial Exam!

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Flange/Flanders

R0N BURGUNDY wrote: »

ps = house, home and garden readers are sound. very loyal even in these hard times.

Ha ha, brilliant quote there Burgundy, that's one thing that made me laugh after that sh*te today!:D

Sean Bateman

Sofa King Great wrote: »

Potentially this won't be a popular opinion but is it not kind of the point that you are seriously against the clock? Especially seeing as it is an open book exam.

Do they want people who can write quickly or people who can produce quality work?

Utterly ridiculous exam. Too long and too many parts.

R0N BURGUNDY

Anyway =- Q2 of Autumn 09 SFMA.

When doing the working for the cost/benefit of the swap, why do they put in an arrangement fee as a +ve figure. surely an arrangement fee would be paid from the company?

ie "Irish Banks PLC will charge an arrangement fee of 0.25% on the value of the loan."

Therefore by my workings:

-450k paid to counterparty
525 received from counterparty
-37.5 arrangement fee
=
37.5

(and not +37.5 which = 112.5 like in the answer)

SL10

Yeah I was wondering the same Ron- i think its an error on the solution- doesnt make sense otherwise

Dick Turnip

yeah was doing that last week and was thinking the same - error in solution. doesn't make sense otherwise.

Dick Turnip

just looking at variance analysis here again. am i right in thinking all they can ask really is the various variances - mix, yield, usage etc. and then the planning and operations variances as a result of that? hoping i'm not missing the glaringly obvious on this section

the method in the notes is way easier than the book's i find aswell for working out these.

Rickyroma

SL10 wrote: »

Yeah I was wondering the same Ron- i think its an error on the solution- doesnt make sense otherwise

Agreed. Error in solution.

Similarly in Sample paper 2 Q 2 there are two mistakes in the question - Medium term bankloan of Sentosa should be 768 and not 964 and the years of the cash flows need to be reversed - top to bottom 05-09 and not 09-05 as currently shows.

R0N BURGUNDY

was wondering about that medium term loan ricky = cheers. all the mistakes make studying a real pain in the balls. tax=omg

Rickyroma

Dick Turnip wrote: »

just looking at variance analysis here again. am i right in thinking all they can ask really is the various variances - mix, yield, usage etc. and then the planning and operations variances as a result of that? hoping i'm not missing the glaringly obvious on this section

the method in the notes is way easier than the book's i find aswell for working out these.

That's what I've taken from it - looks like mix/yield are planning/ops are about as advanced as it gets so that's all they can ask.

Rickyroma

R0N BURGUNDY wrote: »

was wondering about that medium term loan ricky = cheers. all the mistakes make studying a real pain in the balls. tax=omg

I know what the basis of my feedback will be - eviscerating the solutions! It costs you an hour everytime you meet one to figure out for sure that it is a mistake. Gonna request they take them down and start again.

prinz

Best of luck anyone doing SFMA tomorrow.

Vaioer

Unmitigated disaster today in SFMA

1. Ballsed up the variances, then spent every free minute I had trying to sort it- never got near the answer

2. Hedging, hadn't a clue how the calculate the effective rate

3. Case study- nightmare.

I'll be amazed if I break 30% in the paper. Ripping!

R0N BURGUNDY

i dont think i can get any other words out other than = i want to die.

what the hell like. what the hell.

i just couldnt decide what it wanted me to do in half the questions.

in short, after yesterdays flop with time i tried to keep it sweet today. it didnt work. my answers to the case study werent that bad but not great either but then i got to section B and it went tits up with flying colours and it was painful sitting there the last half hour working away knowing fine rightly it was failed. i nearly decided to scribble out the variance workings and try question 4 instead with 15 minutes to go.

breathe in, breathe out...

Vaioer

R0N BURGUNDY wrote: »

i nearly decided to scribble out the variance workings and try question 4 instead with 15 minutes to go.

breathe in, breathe out...

I hear ya brother.

Sure tomorrow will be fine................oh wait.

prinz

Vaioer wrote: »

Sure tomorrow will be fine................oh wait.

OUt of the frying pan into the fire.I didn't have SFMA but I'll be back for FR tomorrow. Not looking forward to it at all.:(

Sofa King Great

Was the multiple of 1 for the hotel valuation a misprint?

Spot_the_Dog

That was crazy hard, failed miserably :mad:

The ONLY potential saving grace was that everyone had the exact same reaction coming out of management accounting last year. They have to pass roughly around half the people who sat the exam (or at least thats what i'm telling myself) and hoping that they mark the exam ridiculously easy. Miniscule chance that a couple (or a lot) of freebie marks thrown in may get me up high enough that the continuous assessment gives me a fighting chance of scraping a pass......very long shot though

R0N BURGUNDY

thats what i was considering but u couldnt mark my paper up enough to pass without passing everybody

gerrymadden1

I feel sorry for the person correcting my paper, the ****e I was talkin is cringeworthy!!

Flange/Flanders

That was ridiculously hard, the seemed to want to throw in the hardest parts from the sections that they put in. Like I didnt do the Variance question because my head started to spin when I read it and so did question 4. Did financial maths in college and that question was up there with some masters questions that we did then, couldnt do them then either. I mean what the hell is a tick value?!

Question 2 was the sort of question that you really needed to have your head screwed on to get right.

Case study, what a joke. So many different parts, most parts seemed to have 2 different questions in them. Like the valuation question why didnt they just ask to work out the value, instead of asking to discuss the logic and limitations of them. As regards the different strategies, found I had to look in both appendices to get the answer to them. Now last night I was thinking that both exams last year were very doable but that one was very challenging. Was confident enough before hand, not any more.

There'll be an email going in after the pints on friday! Might just do it during the pints!

Rickyroma

That was uncalled for.

Simply uncalled for.

R0N BURGUNDY

i reckon if i did last years autumn exam doing a 3.5hour handstand on the table and writing with my pen between my teeth, i would of gotten the same mark as today. turning pages would have been a big issue and no doubt slabbers would have started to creep into equations (like today really i suppose) but id say the marks would have been more or less the same

Spot_the_Dog

Flange/Flanders wrote: »

Now last night I was thinking that both exams last year were very doable but that one was very challenging. Was confident enough before hand, not any more.

Think we're really paying the price for the high pass marks last year, think it was up above 70%. They didn't want the same kind of showing this year, hence the rock-hard paper!

susie-q

i thought the case study was long but doable with the excepting of the valuation part but i think thats my fault 4 not studyin that proper..

as 4 the rest i hadnt a clue the variance question just went way over my head so i attempted the other two but i made some mess of the answers.. and this was meant to be my good subject...

DaeryssaOne

That was fuppin ridiculous....It was the only paper I had any bit of confidence in and I had the stupidity to even smile when I saw the variance question until I actually began it. Trying to figure out now wat I'm actually going to do with my life in October cos will more than likely lose my job...Actually did well in the continuous assessment but don't think that'll do anything for me after the disaster that was today...

seven-iron

That was uncalled for.

Simply uncalled for

too right bud

ManwitaPlan

Well I didnt bother talking to anybody after exam such was my disapointed so there is some relief to learn I was not the only one who thought that was absolutely ridiculous.

Just a strange paper...I did quite well in the mocks but new that meant F all because they can literally ask anything in this exam and by god they did that.

Thought case study was okay for the most part except for the valuations part....realisable value was fine but the other two methods were phrased very strangely.

I did question 2 and actually thought that was okay and its were I hope I picked up a few marks.

Question 3 on variances was an absolute disaster...did it first and my head was spinning by the end....completely fvcked it up.

Bottom line with this exam is they included things that required a lot of thought...thats fine but not under such strict time constraints!!! This is the bottom line, you just dont have time to analyse, choose the most sensible approach and implement it...you have to fire into and if you realise you are making an arse of it halfway through there's nothing you can do. These exam structures need to be revised.

r.dunne7

Hi Everyone

I know the exams are very very tought, but thats what you have to expect with Professional exams, they are a lot harder than college exams and really really test you.

Just look at all the professional bodies ACCA, ACA, CPA, CFA they all have very low pass rates, for ACCA the people that pass the last exams are around 35 % in some papers, that means 70% of people are failing. But becasue they are so ahrd the ACA qualification carries a lot of weight!! The pass mark jsut shows how gruleeing and challenging that they are and in this repect if you can handle these exams u can handle anything.!!! heads up everybody!

So for the ACA it is the same , im sure if they made the exams easy like college exams the pass rate would be about 95 % .

Then people would be moaing about the amrket being flooded by ACA and the qualifcation in IReland would be looked down upon from abroad.

I know it sucks right know but all in all its a zero sum game!

scottishtulip

Glad i wasn't the only one that thought they were tough. Last year we thought they were all awful and then passed them all though so maybe we will fluke through them!

prinz

r.dunne7 wrote: »

So for the ACA it is the same , im sure if they made the exams easy like college exams the pass rate would be about 95 % .

That's all well and good if they were upfront about. People are losing their jobs for failing exams while employers are told that the level expected hasn't changed and that every attempt is made to help people pass.

If you want to argue that the new course isn't more difficult than it was in the past go ahead.