Should I take the CFA?

Question

Hello! First post here!

So I recently graduated college and was fortunate to snag an entry level position in financial services to sponsor me taking my series 7/63. I was doing a light overview of my "dream" career path and found a lot of jobs that I'd be interested in require the aforementioned licence and a CFA.

I am hoping to eventually find myself in an analyst role for equities. So I was hoping to reach out to a formal/informal community about a few questions of my own before I dedicate a good chunk of my time to taking the CFA.

From my general background, should I take the CFA, or at least seriously consider it?

Is there anyone that experienced a similar situation to the one I played out? Did you ever regret your decisions? Did it end up differently that you envisioned?

For those holding your ccharter, how do you refer to yourself? Ex, I'm a CFA? I hold a CFA? (that question is just a little curiosity of mine)

What career paths really cater to a CFA?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! I love a good academic challenge and regardless of what path I end up following, I believe I'd like to challenge myself to all 3 levels of the CFA.

hairyfairy · Answer

From my general background, should I take the CFA, or at least seriously consider it? 
>>you should definitely think about it seriously. If equity research is something you see yourself in eventually, the charter will be a good thing to have.

Is there anyone that experienced a similar situation to the one I played out? Did you ever regret your decisions? Did it end up differently that you envisioned? 
>> i definitely thought it was going to be less effort than it actually is. but i don't regret it - the way I see it, now that I've passed level 1 I can't turn back!

For those holding your ccharter, how do you refer to yourself? Ex, I'm a CFA? I hold a CFA? (that question is just a little curiosity of mine) 
>> as @maroon5 says. you'll learn a lot about that if you do take it, lol.

What career paths really cater to a CFA?
>> any career path involving investment analysis and advice is relevant. I'm in asset management and a lot of my colleagues are either cfa charterholders, in progress, or kind of embarrassed that they don't have one (they always follow up with "I've been meaning to take it") I think the 300hours blog covers a lot about CFA and careers, check it out. http://www.300hours.com/view-all-articles.html#tab5

there is also a huge bunch of info on the cfa institute website: http://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfaprogram/charter/professions/pages/index.aspx

Maroon5 · Answer

Hello @mokamoto‌ , welcome to the 300H community!

I'd say if your target role is an analyst role for equities, CFA would be pretty relevant. There are some good articles about consideration about the CFA exams, and what it entails - there's a tab called "Before starting the CFA exams" here where the articles would be useful. Recommend you read some of it (if you haven't already).

I'm a Level 2 candidate, I don't think anyone would usually regret getting a CFA though, it's always a good qualification for finance.

I think "I'm a CFA charterholder" would be the correct term.

CFA is really useful for research analysts (can be any asset, e.g. equity, credit, etc), asset management, hedge funds and even investment banking. I'm sure there's more, but these are the main ones. There's a nice section under "Industry Insights" here where some of our community members talk about their careers and what they do - good reads.

Hope this helps!