From Physics to Finance: How I Taught Myself the CFA Level 1 (and Scored 90%)

Sean Rocinante

Sean Rocinante

— 4 min read

I started in physics and engineering. Switched to finance with a limited background. Here's how I got through the CFA Level 1.

1- Soft Launch

I got curious about financial markets during my physics degree. The math was very similar to what I was originally doing in Physics. Forex, derivatives, the mechanics of how prices move. I liked that physics takes abstract math and actually tests it against the real world. You theorize, then you check if you're right. I loved both halves of the process: theorizing, then validating. After talking with professors, I realized financial markets offered that same intellectual style, just at a faster pace.

2- Studying for Both School and the CFA

Thanks to my previous backgrounds, I did not need to start from zero when I switched my major. I had the privilege of skipping all first and second year math courses. This means that I only needed to take the necessary finance/economic courses for first and second year. So as I was taking the courses for basic macro/microeconomics or the intro to financial mathematics, I was also simultaneously studying for the Level 1 CFA material.

The CFA Level 1 spans 10 subjects, tested in two blocks:

  • Morning session (AM): Ethics, Quantitative Methods, Economics, Financial Statement Analysis (FSA), Corporate Issuers
  • Afternoon session (PM): Portfolio Management, Equity Investments, Fixed Income, Derivatives, Alternative Investments

Study Discipline

The biggest thing I learned was how to actually teach myself. Not follow a syllabus, just picking up a book, go to the chapter you are looking for, and get through it. Self learning, as I have now completed the exam, is one of the most liberating skills you can have in any field. The power to be able to pick up a book, flip to a chapter and start reading and taking notes without the need for a professor to guide you through the syllabus, has made me learn at even a faster rate.

Being solely responsible for the outcome made me change the way I approached studying. I noticed it most with Financial Statement Analysis, my hardest subject, having never taken accounting. Spending two hours untangling a single concept was challenging, but that friction made me remember important details in the exam.

Casting a Wide Net

The main reason for choosing to even take the Level 1 CFA Exam was that it was able to cast off a wide net of subjects in the financial world. It was a trial by fire crash course with a 45% pass rate. That pressure meant figuring out concepts I'd never had touched in real life. With physics, I'd had years to build intuition, plus lab work to reinforce it.

Building an intuition for the financial world was not as different as I thought it would be. Reading papers like the Financial Times and finding some independent sources of financial market outlooks gave me some nomenclature to attach my learning to. Looking at Fed policy announcements and using them as case studies also helped ease my way into understanding the field more.

3- Studying for the Exam

In the last two months before the exam, I decided that it was time to pull up the official CFAI mock exams and have a go at them. The CFAI mock structure was as follows:

  • There are a total of 8 official mock exams
  • Each mock exam consisted of two parts, A and B
  • Part A is the AM portion of the exam and it covers:
    • Ethics, Quantitative Methods, Economics, Financial Statement Analysis (FSA), Corporate Issuers
  • Part B is the PM portion of the exam and it covers:
    • Portfolio Management, Equity Investments, Fixed Income, Derivatives, Alternative Investments
  • Each part has 90 questions, so each exam totals 180 questions
  • You are allowed a time limit of 2 hours per each part of the exam

I broke the 8 mocks into 16 parts (A and B from each), scheduling one part every morning. I placed strict conditions for myself: closed book, timed, no pre test review. I knew that in order to be in the correct mindset for studying this exam, I needed to be comfortable with the 4 hour exam structure. Every morning I'd sit down, do the part, then spend the rest of the morning reviewing mistakes and taking notes.

The note taking was crucial, as that was the only time I was allowed to review the material. Across these two months of writing mocks, I would never review the material before the test. I would always take the mock test first thing in the morning absent of any reviews. I was testing retrieval and some pattern recognition. If I couldn't summon the material cold, that gap became my study target for the day.

As I approached the last month before the exam, I decided to start writing for the mock exam for both parts A and B. This would mean that everyday, at exactly 8AM, I would sit down and start writing the 4 hour exam, taking a 30 minute break in between parts.

Exam Day

With the test center being an hour away, I had to wake up at 6AM. As I was taking my Uber to the center, I felt confident enough that I did not need to pick up my phone and review my notes. In fact, the exam felt very short to me. I was able to finish both parts A and B with 30 minutes left to spare for both parts after fully reviewing my answers. I even chose to cut the 30 minute break short after only taking 5 minutes off as I felt that my brain felt energized and I did not want to get in the way of its momentum.

Exam Results

It took a while for the CFA Institute to compile all of the Level 1 CFA Exams across the world and evaluate them. But after roughly 50 days of waiting, I got my results back. Here are my stats:

  • The biggest standouts were Derivatives and Portfolio Management, as I got 90% of the points available for the subjects
  • Alternative Investments with about 85%
  • The remaining subjects were all over the 70% band

4- Future Goals and Plans

With the Level 1 CFA Exam successfully completed, my next plan is to participate in the Duke University FinTech Trading Competition. The plan for it is using the Interactive Brokers (IBKR) Python API to create an algorithm that trades live forex and metals. Along with US Bonds, these 3 asset types are the only ones that IBKR gives live data for that is not delayed by 15 minutes.