A personal milestone yesterday: Went to Alameda and took the exam for Securities Industry Essential administered by the FINRA — and passed it, earned my “entry ticket” to the financial industry.
The exam notice said to have 180 minutes with a break in the middle, but they lied: Only 105 minutes with no break. Time always flies when you are taking an exam. The official number of questions is 75, but they added another anonymous 10 to make the total 85, with the 10 “trial questions” not counted toward the passing grade, which is 70% right.
Just like the last time for the insurance agent license, I thought I was to fail, especially when I went over the first round to all the 85 questions. I marked almost all my answers “For review” later, as I felt uncertain about every choice I made. I also felt the preparation package helped little. I told myself to buy another package, perhaps from Kaplan Finance rather than ExamFX, and start over again for a better performance next time, as I would fail the first time.
It felt better when I went over for the second round (my third round did not finish, as I had time to look only at the first 25 questions before time ran out).
Too bad that FINRA won’t tell you anything more than “Pass” or “Fail.” Its website says to expect more feedbacks if you fail. I was hoping to see a message after the exam, offering a breakdown of my scores, but no. They meant what they said. The only thing I know is that I got at least 70% right, which is the passing score. I am also pretty sure I got all the questions right on option trading (e.g., “put and call,” “bid and ask,” “long and short” and “in the money and out of money”), as I rarely erred on those “non-mechanic memory” topics from simulations and chapter end quizzes.
Overall, my feeling is that FINRA has packed all the foundational stuff into SIE and make the other “top-off” exams more on specific and mundane knowledge that the licensees need to conduct their special lines of duty. The preparation package from ExamFX for SIE has 11 chapters, while the package for Series 63 only has 4 chapters. I could be wrong when I later see more exam materials, though.
Do not expect a close match between the real exams and the simulated ones by preparation packages. I think FINRA and exam preparation agencies (e.g., Kaplan, ExamFX) are like mouse and cat, both are watching each other, and both are moving, one (FINRA) is trying to move away from Kaplan, but the latter tries to stay close by, so their simulated exams can look and feel similar to FINRA. I won’t be surprised to find out that FINRA looking at the simulated exams before making up theirs is not like another copy of simulations.
As examples FINRA tries to stand in a distance from Kaplan etc., the very first question yesterday was “If someone passed SIE, it means…” followed by four options. This question is not in the preparation package, and I was totally unprepared. Another question asked about the S&P Rating of securities, more specifically what symbol denotes the “speculative” category, which almost felt like FINRA wants to test our real life financial knowledge, not just from the books. Of course, these may just be those experimental questions and if you work hard enough to internalize the knowledge points from the simulations, you should do okay in the real. The other thing even more important is to look at the four choices and pick up the most reasonable one.