Saturday, April 20, 2013


This is a very good resource for CFA Level 2 exam facts!  At http://www.examfacts.com they have an excellent study guide filled with basic exam facts for the CFA Level 2 exam.  The book is also available at Amazon.com


Example Questions from the Exam Fact CFA Level 2 Book:

Define Conditional Prepayment Rate (CPR)
CPR is the annual rate at which a mortgage pool is expected to be prepaid. This is a generic term fot rate of prepayment; no specific schedule.

Define Public Securities Association (PSA)
The PSA prepayment benchmark is a specific assumption about mortgage pool prepayment rates. PSA assumes mortgage pool monthly prepayments start at 0.2% annual rate and increase by 0.2% each month for the first 30 months of the life of the pool (after month 30, the prepayment rate is constant at 6%).


Define Single Monthly Mortality Rate (SMM)
The PSA is stated in annual terms (i.e., pool will prepay in month 1 at a 0.2% annual rate). You can convert the annual rate to a monthly percentage with the following formulas:
SMM = 1 - (1-CPR)^1/12
Other formulas:
SMM = ABS / [1 - (ABS * (Mo -1))]
ABS = SMM / [1 + (SMM * (Mo -1))]


Define MBS Speed of Prepayment Three Factors
(1) Prevailing Mortgage Rates

(2) Housing Turnover

(3) Characteristics of Underlying Mortgages (Seasoning and Property Location)


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