Is becoming a CFA a useful tool to expand investing power, and when does knowledge become a crutch?

• The first line of each "paragraph" is the general bit of that paragraph. Most of this is just to make sure I cover the bases for people who don't know about CFAs, or my background.

• A Chartered Financial Analyst can specialize in many topics I imagine, from management to stocks and bonds--don't we do that already with Robinhood?--or even general financial analysis--red= buy, green=sell. Some of this pokes fun at broad concepts, for sure these folks know a lot of these topics and to make light of their time would be a disservice to myself and others like me--who don't know much at all, about anything.

• The Wikipedia page on their position is pretty neat, but it doesn't really provide much insight other than the general "here is what they do, here is how to be one."

• I see a lot of YouTube financial advisors touting a lot of nice whiteboards with expensive markers, and they all glean enough information to let folks do "good enough" to run a profit. However, if we keep digging, it's pretty easy to say, "ok this amount of time I am personally investing is getting out of hand. I could be using this but I am only getting a slight return on my money made recycling cans."

• I have a professional degree in a field that is very under appreciated, and not very well received apparently--paltry pay for arduous jobs--generally considered it is working out, but for a year now I've been seeking new career paths.
  Financial research, specifically surrounding investment and asset management and the "how" we think about the green part of our blood really interests me.

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So the title question:
Is becoming a CFA a useful tool to expand investing power?

And a second question:
For an individual who understands the general aspects of stocks/bonds, and a decent amount (ie a little more than what the intro class in undergrad gave us) of micro/macro economics can we generalize the amount of study needed to pass level I testing?

Say 4 hours a day, probably a month?

Submitted December 22, 2017 at 09:39PM by crowcawer http://ift.tt/2pempiZ