Taking the CFA Level I exam when you’ve got no financial background can be a daunting task. In fact, it can seem downright impossible to pass when you have nothing to go on.

Ethics is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of professionals in the financial services industry.  As trusted advisors, we are given a mandate by our clients to manage, preserve, and grow their assets and to operate in their best financial interests.

I certainly had more questions than answers when beginning my journey, but after going through it, I figured out what was truly important and what isn’t. I hope to shed some light on what you need to know before embarking on the path to becoming a CFA charterholder and I will also highlight some common misconceptions.

"Portfolio Construction and Revision" is a sub-heading of "Portfolio Management and Wealth Planning" (Part X of CFA Institute Candidate Body of Knowledge, or CBOK).  As portfolio management and wealth planning are significant disciplines that CFA® candidates and charterholders find themselves engaged in on a day-to-day basis, it is useful to explore functionality within the terminal setting that can be applied to these tasks.

One of the remarkable trends of the last 10 years has been the growing popularity of exchange traded funds (ETFs) as advisers and the investing public have grown frustrated by their failed efforts to outperform the major market indexes. As returns continue to fall short of expectations and the prospects of subpar annual returns looms on the horizon, fees for actively managed portfolios are receiving greater attention than they would in a higher-return environment.