Series 7 Question
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[quote=Starka]
I never met anyone who needed more than two hours to pass the exam.
For the record, I too scored in the mid-nineties. It never mattered one iota on my commissions.
[/quote]Then you have never met anybody who passed the exam.
[quote=Put Trader] [quote=Dewey Cheatham]
I can't remember. I not longer live in New York. I took two trains actually...I remember that one of them was the "L"...I had to transfer...my ultimate goal was 590 Madison Avenue.
[/quote]
Is that right, the L train comes into play when one is trying to get from 34th and 8th to Madison in the mid 50s?
[/quote]
Well...when I get finished working I will head home and pull out my old NYC subway map and give you the details.
[quote=babbling looney]
Well, I did. It took about an hour and fifteen minutes per half
including review, which I didn’t do too much of. Either they
were right or they weren’t.
What is driving me nuts is that I spend hours in the evening and early morning answering private messages from people who are reading this stuff and when you folks are wrong I'd be derilict to not point it out.
Ms. Looney is saying that she was able to negotiate 130 questions in 4,500 seconds--for an average of 34 seconds per question.
Think about that. How in the world can somebody--UNDER GREAT STRESS--do that? Even a short question is going to take at least five seconds to read and ensure that you have digested what it's asking. Then it will take at least 2 or 3 seconds to look at an answer, much less decide it it's right or not. Good test taking DEMANDS that even though you have decided that it's "A" you damn well better look at B, C and D too just to be sure.
There is an effort to keep the mix like this. 150 "no brainer" type questions, 60 questions that challenge college graduates and 40 questions that are going to have to be guessed.
The idea is that the candiate will get 90% of the no brainers (135); 70% of the challenging questions (42) and 40% of the guesses (16).
That is goiing to yield 193 correct answers which is a 77%.
Somebdy who gets all of the no brainers, 90% of the challenging questions and 60% of the guesses will end up with 225 correct answers which is only a 90%.
As with most of this stuff I know it backwards and forewards and it's not easy to impress me or fool me.
[quote=Dewey Cheatham][quote=Put Trader] [quote=Dewey Cheatham]
I can't remember. I not longer live in New York. I took two trains actually...I remember that one of them was the "L"...I had to transfer...my ultimate goal was 590 Madison Avenue.
[/quote]
Is that right, the L train comes into play when one is trying to get from 34th and 8th to Madison in the mid 50s?
[/quote]
Let me save you the effort. The L train runs along 14th Street from 8th Avenue out into Brooklyn.
Nobody--not even Boris from Minsk--will go south in order to end up north.
However, as bad as your sense of direction is it is eclipsed by your sense of time.
Tell, have you been able to convince women that four inches is actually nine?
Well...when I get finished working I will head home and pull out my old NYC subway map and give you the details.
[/quote][quote=Put Trader] [quote=Starka]
I never met anyone who needed more than two hours to pass the exam.
For the record, I too scored in the mid-nineties. It never mattered one iota on my commissions.
[/quote]
Then you have never met anybody who passed the exam.
[/quote]
Unlike you, lightweight, I actively work in the securities industry. It's far more likely that I have met and work with successful brokers who have, by definition, passed the exam.
What else have you got?
[quote=Starka][quote=Put Trader] [quote=Starka]
I never met anyone who needed more than two hours to pass the exam.
For the record, I too scored in the mid-nineties. It never mattered one iota on my commissions.
[/quote]
Then you have never met anybody who passed the exam.
[/quote]
Unlike you, lightweight, I actively work in the securities industry. It's far more likely that I have met and work with successful brokers who have, by definition, passed the exam.
What else have you got?
[/quote]You're saying that every broker you know passed the exam using an average of less than 30 second per question.
I'm saying that you don't know a single person who did that--not one, nada, zilch, bumpkus. It is mentally impossible to read the questions well enough to understand them in less than two hours.
If that was possible, braintrust, why do you suppose that the testing professionals who design the exam insist that six hours is challenging?
It’s killing you, Laughing Boy, isn’t it? No one here is buying into your inane drivel. If, in fact, you really do work somewhere in the brokerage business, you must work with some incredibly stupid people. (Of course, to work for a moron like yourself, they would have to be pretty stupid, wouldn’t they?)
The series 7 wasn't difficult at all, compared to the CFP exams; especially the investment planning module. There was no great stress for me, at least. I guess I could find my score somewhere in my continuing ed file and fax it to you, but why bother. It really doesn't matter, except that you say it can't be done. I have an excellent memory, which is why I was able to score in the mid 90s. In addition, I had been in the business as a series 6 for about 9 years already before the 7, so much of the material was old news. Reading a question in 30 seconds is no big deal either, if you can speed read. There were very few questions that I felt were ambigious. I also followed the sage advice of not overthinking the answers. Usually the first impulse on this type of test is the correct answer. What I did do, was to write down the number of the few questions that I was unsure about on the scratch paper and review ONLY those questions. By the time I had reached the end of the section, many of the questionable questions had been answered by succeeding questions. (Clear as mud?)
I must admit that the hardest part of the test was the options section. But, all a person needs to do is come up with some mnemonic tools and then the questions are not all that difficult. I have since completely forgotten the tools I used since they are not useful to me now. I have never ever failed a test or received anything less than an A in my years of schooling. Except P.E.
You are right. The score has nothing to do with commissions or ultimate success in the business.
Today is a veeeery slow day and I'm taking off early to do a seminar for a lady's club so I have time to fart around here
[quote=babbling looney]
What I did do, was to write down the number
of the few questions that I was unsure about on the scratch paper and
review ONLY those questions. By the time I had reached the
end of the section, many of the questionable questions had been
answered by succeeding questions. (Clear as mud?)
OK, so you’re moving along at a rate that is three to four times faster
than the pros at Education Testing Service suggest is a challenge,
getting everyting right the instant you see it. Including
somewhere between thirty and forty problems that require math skills
and quite possibly a calculator.
What about the questions that require you to look at the exhibit
book–to interpret a bond quote, to value a portfoliio, to determine
the sales charge on a mutual fund?
Are you here to tell us that you could solve this in thirty seconds?
All of the following will be found in the notice of sale for a serial issue of general obligation bonds EXCEPT:
I. The opinion of the bond attorney
II. The credit rating as assigned by a national rating agency
III. The purpose of the offering
IV. The bond years
If it took you more than ten seconds to read that question you’re way behind schedule.
Forget about looking at the actual answers, the I and III or I, III and
IV stuff–there is absolutely no time for nonsense like that.
Just read the question and choose the answer.
How about this.
You client
purchased 1,000 shares of XYZ at 56 5/8 and simultaneously wrote ten
XYZ Oct 55 calls for 4 3/8. How much will he be expected to
deposit on settlement date?
OK, answer it NOW–you’re taking too long! You either know the answer or you don’t–what’s the problem??
I know, I know–you make up for it on the easy ones. Things like this:
Regulation T regulates transactions in:
a. Margin Accounts
b. Cash Accounts
c. Both a and b
d. Neither a nor b
That’s a no brainer, what’s the answer? If you’re taking more than about 5 seconds you’re losing time.
Now, tell me about how quick it is to go back and change a question
that you realize was wrong based on something you remembered
later. Suppose that when you’re working number 122 you realize
that you missed a question about debentures that you took
earlier. How do you find it, while maintaining the pace of 30
seconds per question?
Doing it in less than two hours is a challenge–doing it in less than 90 minutes is impossible.
You’re a bright woman. Why do you suppose ETS tells the NYSE that
six hours is a challenge when it seems that everybody but me thinks it
can be done at the torrid pace of 30 seconds or less per question?
Put, it's not only do-able in 90 minutes, it's likely. Take three weeks and a book of similar or identical questions, and it's a no-brainer.
Look, the Series 7 is NOT a test of an individual's working knowledge of securities; like most multiple choice exams, it's a test of how well one takes tests. And the General Securities license doesn't necessarily mean that an individual knows anything about the securities business. It means that he or she has been taught the regulations, and has successfully passed a test to that effect. In short, it means we're willing to take the blame if a reg has been violated. Nothing more.
Personally, I'd prefer an essay type test to judge a person's understanding. However, as usual there is no objective way to grade such an exam when given on such a large scale.
And so we move on.
"I'm saying that you don't know a single person who did that--not one, nada, zilch, bumpkus. It is mentally impossible to read the questions well enough to understand them in less than two hours."
---Put Trader
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now THAT'S perhaps the most idiotic things that you've posted yet. And given the low level of intelligence and understanding that you've displayed thus far, that's quite an achievement!
Congratulations!
[quote=Philo Kvetch]
Put, it’s not only do-able in 90 minutes, it’s
likely. Take three weeks and a book of similar or identical
questions, and it’s a no-brainer.
Look, the Series 7 is NOT a test of an individual's working knowledge of securities; like most multiple choice exams, it's a test of how well one takes tests. And the General Securities license doesn't necessarily mean that an individual knows anything about the securities business. It means that he or she has been taught the regulations, and has successfully passed a test to that effect. In short, it means we're willing to take the blame if a reg has been violated. Nothing more.
Personally, I'd prefer an essay type test to judge a person's understanding. However, as usual there is no objective way to grade such an exam when given on such a large scale.
And so we move on.
[/quote]Just another soul who hasn't got a clue.
Series 7 is far more than a 250 question test about regulations. At best there are 15 or 20 things that could be called questions dealing with regulations.
Fifty of the questions involve municipal bonds, how they're traded and how they're underwritten. Those questions are written by the MSRB and are INTENTIONALLY very tricky. It's a revenge deal having to do with the SEC requiring the muni bond business to be cleaned up by using a difficult exam.
The most difficult exam is the Series 27 (FinOp) but the second most difficult one is the Series 52 (Limited Registration--Municipal Securities). It goes back about twenty-five years. THe MSRB was mandated to write difficult questions and submit them to the SEC for review. The SEC kept telling the MSRB that the questions needed to be more difficult. Finally when the MSRB had written a very difficult exam the SEC approved it.
The MSRB then announced that they were going to use those questions as their 20% contribution to the Series 7 and the Series 8, which is now the 9/10. The SEC, NASD and NYSE could hardly say that that was not fair that the Series 7 was to have easy municipal questions, only the Series 52 and 53 were to be tricky.
Also, the MSRB is notorious for writing new questions all the time an simply logging onto the computer and changing their share of the question base. As a result training departments and outside vendors such as Dearborn find it virtually impossible to predict what a candidate will see. The idea that that all somebody has to do is spend a few hours with some sample questions and go take the exam is specious.
Add the layer that this forum is crawling--absolutly crawling--with slackers who are actually so devoid of self pride that they boast that they got a 70% on a professional level qualification exam and it's no wonder the public has come to consider stockbrokers little more than used car salesmen.
Look stupid, virtually everthing on the Series 7 exam has to do with regulations and the various ways to run afoul of them. Do you think the NASD cares whether or not a working broker knows how a muni is underwritten? Of course not! The information is tested so the broker knows how to keep his firm from being excluded from the process by his actions.
You should talk to some working brokers some time. Especially if you come into some money.
[quote=Philo Kvetch]
Look stupid, virtually everthing on the Series
7 exam has to do with regulations and the various ways to run afoul of
them. Do you think the NASD cares whether or not a working broker
knows how a muni is underwritten? Of course not! The
information is tested so the broker knows how to keep his firm from
being excluded from the process by his actions.
You should talk to some working brokers some time. Especially if you come into some money.
[/quote]Is that right, they don't care about municipal bond underwriting?
There will be no questions about bond attorneys, Notices of Sale, Bid Forms, Official Statements, Tombstone ads, syndicate managers, selling group members, bond years, dated dates, long first coupons, Spread, Takedown, Additional Takedown, Concession, Allocation, Retention, Priority of Orders, Limited Tax Issuers, Agreement Among Underwriters, Syndicate Letters, Easter/Western obligations.....I grow weary.
What did you get on yours, genius, a 70% and you're running around saying, "You know what they call the guy who graduates last in the class at West Point?"
And what do you think those various topics refer to? REGULATIONS!
Oh, and it's the USNA. And I didn't graduate last in my class. Far from it.
[quote=Philo Kvetch]
And what do you think those various topics refer to? REGULATIONS!
Oh, and it's the USNA. And I didn't graduate last in my class. Far from it.
[/quote]It would be fun to see you use the words "Dated Date" in a question that invovles regulations.
Or the term Syndicate Letter, or the term Designated Call.
A regulation is something like when Reg T requires payment for a purchase of T-Bonds. What is that?
And what is a "Syndicate Letter"? A courtesy? No stupid, it's a requirement.
I'll tell you the same thing I told countless other non-hacking no-loads such as yourself...stay away from the action. You can't cut it.
Oh but silly me...you already know that!
[quote=Philo Kvetch]
And what is a “Syndicate Letter”? A courtesy? No stupid, it’s a requirement.
[/quote]Nope, it’s not a requirement. There are NO requirements in the
underwriting of municipals–they’re exempt securities. Instead
it’s a courtesy based on tradition.
Next.
Uh huh.
Let's see how far you get forming a syndicate ignoring the rules. (Or "courtesies, to big shots like you.)
[quote=Philo Kvetch]
Uh huh.
Let's see how far you get forming a syndicate ignoring the rules. (Or "courtesies, to big shots like you.)
[/quote]What would you cite as a rule regarding forming syndicates?