FRM This November

For about a week, I stopped going around my visits and started preparing seriously for FRM (Financial Risk Management) exam.  I have enrolled in the full exam format.  This is the last year in which GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) - the organisation which administers FRM) conducts full exam.  From next year onwards, FRM is offered in 2 levels with the portion approximately divided into 50% in each.  This November though, both formats are available. 

FRM is of higher difficulty level in terms of vastness of the content.  CFA takes comparably less content in each of its levels and goes deep into the areas in terms of variety of problems offered in each area.  The focus though is completely different in the two exams.  Both introduces the basic financial aspects and products.  But CFA, as the level progresses goes more into portfolio management and management/design of various customized financial products.  FRM on the other hand, focuses more on various risks one would expect in an organisation, with more focus on financial institutions and banks.  It has detailed reading references to BASEL Regulations, credit, market and operational risks.  

CFA has around 18% of marks allocated to ethics and CFA guidelines.  FRM also has certain ethical guidelines, but the weight for them is less than 10% (in the full exam).  Both reading references point to past financial failures like Enron, Wolrdcom, Bearings etc. and asks the learner to understand what went wrong in those cases.

Let me see how my preparation and the exam goes!

Deception Point

Just finished reading Deception Point by Dan Brown. Usually I take a few weeks to read a novel of around 500 pages. But, surprisingly this one was over within 10 days. I started this on my visit to Tolouse/Bordeaux and finished next week during the visit to Eastern Europe. Most of my journey time was well spent in reading.

It is a typical Dan Brown novel. NASA finds something path-breaking in Arctic circle. The discovery of this of such a magnitude has huge implications on the image of NASA and on the impending Presidential election contested by the incumbent Zach Herney and Senator Sedgewich Sexton. Rachel Sexton, daughter of Senator Sexton works for NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) and reports to William Pickering, Director of NRO. The relationship between Sexton and his daughter is ailing. On a fine morning, Rachel receives a special request from the President and she is taken to Arctic circle in a special flight. Her task is to ascertain the facts that she finds there (the facts claimed by NASA) and report it to the White House staff.

NASA has been criticized widely for its repeated failure missions and overspending. It is the main pole against which Sexton is holding his campaign. The discovery could be the defining moment for NASA and its director Lawrence Ekstrom. The President employs 4 civilians from various discipline to ascertain the claims made by NASA - Michael Tolland, Norah Mangor, Corky Marlinson and Wailee Ming. The camp of NASA at arctic circle has been closely watched by 3 people belonging to Delta Force. When Wailee Ming finds something fishy about the discovery, he is killed by the Delta Force.

Rachel Sexton goes with Tolland, Mangor and Marlinson to ascertain the facts when they are attacked by the Delta Force. Mangor dies where the remaining there run for their lives. The plot then fastens up with finding about what is fishy about the discovery and who could be behind this. The knots get untied one by one.

With these characters, Gabrielle Ashe (personal assistant to Senator Sexton), Marjorie Tench (Senior Adviser in White House), Xavia (one of the team members of Tolland's oceanography discovery team) all have their important roles to play.

Behind this discovery there is a lot at stake for many people involved directly with it.

The story is well embedded with good amount of information regarding meterorites, oceonography, White House inside information, some elements of psychology etc. I have never heard of the NRO before this which is a space intelligence agency of US supplying classified information to CIA, Defense etc.

But as the story goes, it is kind of easy to predict who could be behind all the crimes. But, still the author maintains suspense in how is going to reveal it and what how he handles after the information is revealed.

The story is properly built up with author revealing the discovery only after 100 pages. After that the murders start, plot and the characters fly in jets.

A good read!

Gmail Trick

The post that I did before this one was through gmail.  You just need to write your blog and send it to an unique "blogger.com" address which you can get from settings on blogger.  One of the facts that limited my gmail posting was that I was not able to embed images on to the mail.  Simply, you cannot copy and paste an image as you do in the MS Outlook.  But there is a work around.  You can copy an image from a location on internet and paste it on to the browser.  It works!  So, I can upload my images on flickr or picasa and copy from it and paste on to my blog post!

In fact the gmail logo you see above is also embedded in the same way!

Post from Milan

I came to Milan as exchange student in the beginning of Septemeber.  From then on, I have been going around places in Europe - Venice, Berlin, Bern, Bordeaux, Austria, Czech, Slovakia, Frankfurt.  Had been consumed by the picasa, facebook, twitter in the time I am in Milan with of course a few hours to spare for the classes here in Bocconi Universtiy.

This is one of the pictures taken in Interlaken, Switzerland - unarguably one of the beautiful countries of the world.

This is quite some lull in the blog updates. Hoping to update frequently.  Especially, in the tours of the past one and half months, there were so many new experiences which are worth sharing.  I shall update as and when I reflect and gather.