I found question 9 difficult and turned it into a right mess, ended up going back to it and getting an answer but it is probably wrong. I remember thinking that question 10 seemed odd but I didnt have time to spot any errors and therefore went with the first answer I got.
What was Q9 Again? Q10 Was REALLY dodgey i agree, i thought that by investing in the project COSTS AND BENEFITS are reduced to 0, meaning the NPV was somthing simple like -440-50*a_50, for 5 marks, and it was 2 questions in a row???? Way to simple for 10 marks??? Sureley that has to be a trick question or somthing?
Question 9 was on probabilities and variance and all such fun, I just could not get the right answers! I had learnt all the proofs for these but couldn't seem to apply then for this question! Question 10 I think worked out that it wasnt worth doing the project as the time span of benefits wasnt long enough but I dont have total faith in my starting formula and it did seem odd that we had to do the same calculation twice with a different number in it
I think Q9 the thing was that the premium was calculated at the expected mean rate, but profit was calculated at the accumulated mean value or somthing, it came out to somthing like 86 with a variance of about 1 grand. Im really stressing about Q10, the way i read it it said costs and benefits reduced to 0 so all that crap that they outlined was basically irrelevant? I really am starting to think i read it wrong.
I dont think question 9 was meant to be hard, my brain had just started melting at that point!! I wouldnt worry to much about question 10, didnt it have some book work/explanation bits to it? I can't remember what I got for that one to be honest, I got an answer and went straight back to question 9. How did you find the rest of it?
I did most of it correctly i think. That first question seriously f*ed me up, just the combination of the exam pressure and a Non-standard first question!!! I eventually got it though. The other one i had a problem with was the one where the two alternatives for the loan repayment were given? I probably could have done it but i couldnt be bothered wasting time thinking, i just calculated the montly payment into the savings and left it at that. I also screwed up that DMT calculation im sure, because i got somthing like 5 yrs.. I used the correct method though, so conservativley speaking if i say i threw away 20 on the last Q, and 7 on the loan Q, and 3 on the DMT Q id probably get about 70%. u?
70 % is pretty good I was also thrown but the none standard questions, there seemed to be loads of questions missing that had been on the past papers. Think it went ok but I run out of time and didnt get a chance to check any answers. 5 yrs for DMT sounds familiar but it seems like a lifetime ago. I was cross with myself for running out of time though, before the exam I was completing papers in a max of 2 1/2 hours and there were only 10 questions on this paper but I was nervous and ran out of time. I guess we wont really know until 11th Dec
yeah the layout was horrible. No explict Q on the term structure, par yields etc, no lognorma question, no immunisation, no DPP Question, none of those nice typical loan repayment questions asking 2 idenfify interest payments. There was a sh*tload of interpolation on the first few questions too. But by the same token there were alot of christmas presents on there, for eg the question asking for the real yield
Yeah I agree It was definately designed to throw people off when they first looked, and weed out those who just did papers rather than learning the course. However, they did not make it impossible you just had to be on your toes
You got that right.. Also No TWRR/MWRR Question, they usually feature. How about for that investor or whatever who had his investments between 25th and 65th birthday, that was REALLY non standard, i got somthing like 246k quid
Yeah that was a bit odd but I think some of the Acted questions where a bit like that so at least I had done one before! I cant remember what I got for that one. Will be interesting to look over the paper when they release it
I agree with you on Q10, i took the first lot of info to mean 0, so just did a simple NPV calc like you, then repeated it using a different number of years for the next question, kept thinking there was something i was missing as it couldn't be that easy?! I totally messed up question 9 and the second part of 8, the loan question, asking what rate of return the lady with the interest only mortgage paid confused me too. Thinking back i made a few mistakes on the question where you had to take into account inflation so lost a couple of marks there too.
Well I am glad someone else agrees, I'm still sure it has to be wrong because there's no way that 10% of the marks for the whole paper can be attained In about 45 seconds They should include "Solve ambiguously defined and poorly worded net present value problems" as a syllabus objective in future
ASET Attempt Hi, Had a go at this one last night; and I unfortunately achieved my worst score out of all the past papers for this one. In my error and stupidity; I did fly through the questions without "proper" reading. Q10 - I wasn't able to infer the change of costs to benefits (thought that was ambiguous and a little unfair of examiners to assume candidates would know that). Loll'ed at the examiner's report "we were disappointed that many candidates failed to see...." - Jeez....what did they expect? Q9 - I felt the wording of the question led me the wrong way for this; which ultimately left me with minus 14 marks. Q8(ii) - I calculated all the neccessary values but wasn't sure how to construct the EQ.Val to estimate the annual rate required. Q7 - I felt this was easy overall; but the annuity stream needed to calculate the rest of the question (at the start) was too complicated and I ended up with the wrong value. Which meant I lost most of the marks. Q6 was easy given it contained mixed topics; although I made the common mistake of taking the annual coupons as the half-yearly coupons The other questions were relatively straight-forward. Prior past paper exams, I have scored roughly 65 - 85 % which is good enough I suppose (although 70+ is my aim). So its annoying personally when a particular exam contains "those" questions which are worth large amounts of marks. As the old posts below commented on, this paper contained some strange questions in the absence of many common questions often seen in previous questions.
