AFA study plan

Explain the three primary financial statements and how they articulate, without referencing notes

Compute free cash flow to the firm and to equity from a given set of financials

Distinguish between operating and financing leases and describe their balance-sheet and income-statement effects

Calculate the weighted average cost of capital given component costs and target weights

Apply the dividend discount model and the Gordon growth model to value a stable dividend-paying firm

Compare absolute valuation (DDM, FCFE) and relative valuation (P/E, P/B, EV/EBITDA) and state when each is appropriate

Compute and interpret the standard set of profitability, liquidity, solvency, and efficiency ratios

Solve time-value-of-money problems involving uneven cash flows, annuities, and perpetuities

Calculate and interpret the mean, median, variance, and standard deviation of a return series

Explain the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics and identify when each is used

Construct an investment policy statement for a hypothetical client with stated return and risk objectives

Explain the Markowitz efficient frontier and the role of correlation in portfolio risk reduction

Compute the price, yield, and duration of a plain-vanilla bond given its cash flows

Distinguish between modified duration, Macaulay duration, and convexity and describe their uses

Identify the major risks faced by fixed-income investors and match each to a mitigation approach

Summarize the core provisions of the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct

Apply the Standards to at least five realistic fact patterns and justify the correct course of action

Explain the payoff profiles of forwards, futures, options, and swaps

Compute the value at expiration of a call and a put and identify the breakeven price

Describe the main categories of alternative investments and their distinguishing risk and liquidity features

Analyze the effects of foreign currency translation on reported financial statements under the current-rate and temporal methods

Evaluate the quality of a firm's earnings by identifying common revenue-recognition and expense-timing red flags

Build a three-stage dividend discount model and sensitivity-test the output to changes in growth and discount rate

Interpret valuation multiples across peer firms and explain the limitations of each multiple

Evaluate a capital budgeting project using NPV, IRR, and payback and reconcile conflicts among the methods

Explain how a firm's capital structure decision affects its cost of capital and firm value under the Modigliani-Miller propositions

Compute the yield to maturity, current yield, and holding-period return for a bond under different reinvestment assumptions

Describe how duration and convexity are used to estimate a bond's price change for a given yield shift

Explain the capital asset pricing model and compute the required return on equity given beta and market risk premium

Distinguish between active and passive portfolio management and describe the role of the benchmark

Interpret the output of a simple linear regression and explain the meaning of R-squared and the standard error of the estimate

Describe the major macroeconomic indicators and explain how monetary and fiscal policy affect asset prices

Complete a full-length timed mock exam under exam conditions and record section-by-section scores

Review every missed question and classify each error as knowledge gap, calculation error, or misread question

Re-derive the ten formulas most frequently missed on the mock from memory

Revisit the ethics standards and apply them to at least three new fact patterns