CFA® – Level II

• Décrocher le niveau 2 du CFA

Ethics

• Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct
• Guidance for Standards I–VII
• CFA Institute Soft Dollar Standards
• CFA Institute Research Objectivity Standards
• The Glenarm Company
• Preston Partners
• Super Selection
• Trade Allocation: Fair Dealing and Disclosure
• Changing Investment Objectives
• Prudence in Perspective

Quantitative Methods

• Correlation and Regression
• Hypothesis testing
• ANOVA and F-Statsitic
• Standard error and confidence intervals
• Multiple Regression and Issues in Regression Analysis
• The R coefficient and its interpreatation
• Multicollinearity
• Time- Series Analysis
• Autocorrelation
• Autoregressive models
• Mean reversion

Corporate finance part 1

• Capital Budgeting
• The impacts of inflation
• Explain and calculate the discount rate for valuing a capital project
• Accounting income and economic income
• Capital Structure
• The Modigliani-Miller propositions regarding capital structures
• The effects of capital structures
• Dividends and Share Repurchases
• Theory of dividend policies
• Dividend coverage ratios

Corporate finance part 2

• Corporate Governance
• The major business forms
• Agency theory and relationships
• Effective corporate governance practices
• Environmental, social and governance risk exposures
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Bootstrapping of earning per share
• The Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index
• Company valuation methods
• Distinguish among equity carve-outs, spin-offs, split-offs and liquidation

Economics

• Currency Exchange Rates: Determination and Forecasting
• Bid-Ask Spread
• Carry trade
• The Mundell-Fleming model
• The role of the central bank
• Economic Growth and the Investment Decision
• Impacts of factors on the labor productivity
• The impact of demography and immigration
• The different growth theories
• Regulation principles
• The main actors of economic regulation
• The benefits and costs of regulation

Derivatives part 1

• Forward Markets and Contracts
• The value of a forward contract is determined at initiation, during the life of the contract, and at expiration
• Forward contracts on a fixed-income security
• Forward rate agreements
• Forward contracts on a currency
• Futures Markets and Contracts
• Value of a futures contract
• Pricing Eurodollar futures
• Prices of Treasury bond futures, stock index futures, and currency futures

Derivatives part 2

• Option Markets and Contracts
• Prices of a synthetic call option, synthetic put option, synthetic bond, and synthetic underlying stock
• The Black–Scholes–Merton model
• The put–call parity for options on forwards (or futures)
• Swap Markets and Contracts
• Interest Rate Derivative Instruments
• Cap and Floor structures
• Credit Default Swaps

Alternative Investments

• Private Real Estate Investments
• Income, cost, and sales comparison approaches to valuing real estate properties
• The direct capitalization and discounted cash flow valuation methods
• Real estate investment trust (REIT)
• Publicly Traded Real Estate Securities
• Private Equity Valuation
• Investing in Hedge Funds
• A Primer on Commodity Investing

Financial Analysis part 1

• Inventories: Implications for Financial Statements and Ratios
• Impacts of inflation and deflation
• LIFO reserves and Liquidation
• Long-lived Assets: Implications for Financial Statements and Ratios
• Depreciation methods
• The impact of leasing
• The impacts of revaluation

Financial Analysis part 2

• Intercorporate Investments
• IFRS
• US GAAP
• Employee Compensation: Post-Employment and Share- Based
• The types of post-employment benefits
• The Benefit pensions costs
• Multinational Operations
• The impact of exchange rates on translated sales
• Current rate and temporal rate method for accounting

Financial Analysis part 3

• EBITDA, Operating Profit, earnings, net incomes…
• Evaluating Financial Reporting Quality
• Integration of Financial Statement Analysis Techniques
• The impacts of the standard methods on ratios
• Improvement of the comparability of financial statements
• Financial reporting choices and biases

Fixed Income part 1

• Credit Analysis Models
• Credit scoring and Credit rating
• Models of corporate credit risk
• Term structure of credit spreads
• Term Structure and Volatility of Interest Rates
• Parallel and non-parallel shifts of the yield curve
• SWAP rate curve
• Yield volatility
• Valuing Bonds with Embedded Options
• Describe and evaluate a convertible bond
• Interpret an option-adjusted spread

Fixed Income part 2

• Mortgage-Backed Sector of the Bond Market
• Explain investment characteristics, payment characteristics, and risks of mortgage passthrough securities
• Collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO)
• The basic structure of a commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS)
• Asset-Backed Sector of the Bond Market
• Amortizing assets and non-amortizing assets
• Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)
• Valuing Mortgage-Backed and Asset- Backed Securities
• The calculation, use, and limitations of the cash flow yield, nominal spread, and zero-volatility spread for a mortgage-backed security and an asset-backed security

Equity part 1

• Equity Valuation: Applications and Processes
• Definitions of value, and justify which definition of value is most relevant
• Sum-of-the-parts valuation
• Return Concepts
• The Fama–French model, the Pastor–Stambaugh model, macroeconomic multifactor models, and the build-up method
• Describe strengths and weaknesses of methods used to estimate the required return on an equity investment
• The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy
• Evaluate the predictability and malleability of an industry and select an appropriate strategy
• Industry and Company Analysis
• Top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid approaches for developing inputs to equity valuation models
• The effects of technological developments on demand, selling prices, costs, and margins

Equity part 2

• Discounted Dividend Valuation* the dividend discount model (DDM) for single and multiple holding periods
• The present value of growth opportunities (PVGO)
• The use of DuPont analysis to estimate a company’s sustainable growth rate
• Free Cash Flow Valuation
• Compare the free cash flow to the firm (FCFF) and free cash flow to equity (FCFE) approaches to valuation
• The single-stage (stable-growth), two-stage, and three-stage FCFF and FCFE models
• Market-Based Valuation: Price and Enterprise Value Multiples
• Residual Income Valuation
• Private Company Valuation
• The role of valuation standards in valuing private companies

Portfolio Management part 1

• Portfolio Concepts
• mean–variance analysis
• minimum-variance and efficient frontiers
• variance of an equally weighted portfolio of n stocks, explain the capital allocation and capital market lines (CAL and CML)
• the arbitrage pricing theory (APT)
• Residual Risk and Return: The Information Ratio
• the terms “alpha” and “information ratio” in both their ex post and ex ante senses
• the information ratio and the alpha’s T-statistic
• investor risk aversion

Portfolio Management part 2

• The Fundamental Law of Active Management
• The terms “information coefficient” and “breadth” and describe how they combine to determine the information ratio
• The assumptions on which the fundamental law of active management is based
• The Portfolio Management Process
• Ethical conduct as a requirement for managing investment portfolios
• Capital market expectations
• Evaluate the effects of time horizon on portfolio choice

• Interaction avec votre intervenant en rapport avec son expérience et l’actualité
• TP et cas pratiques multiples