SIE Exam focus areas can be found in a few sections throughout the textbook. What we refer to as “focus areas” are not necessarily the most important but certainly help add some easy points to your score. In today’s post, we will highlight a few of these areas that carry a decent amount of freight for the SIE exam.
SIE Exam Focus Areas…Know Your Yields
For starters, remember that the SIE Exam is fairly broad in its testing. There are only a few subjects that get tested multiple times. One of these subjects could be around yields.
Specifically, nominal yield, current yield, yield to maturity, and yield to call. These concepts can be somewhat confusing, since they are largely mathematically-based. However, the reality is that you don’t need to know the math. You simply need to memorize the order in which they appear.
In fact, all you really need to know is if a bond is trading at a discount below par, where the yields end up. Also, if a bond is trading at a premium, what happens there?
For a little more help on this, we have a quick video that can help. Contact us for free access to our SIE video course.
SLoBS and BLiSS?
These two seemingly unrelated words can be extremely helpful. Namely, they are the acronyms that are commonly used in the section on stop orders and limit orders.
To spell them out in their entirety, SLoBS stands for: Sell Limit or Buy Stop. And BLiSS stands for: Buy Limit or Sell Stop.
One other important thing to know about this SLoBS and BLiSS acronym is the order. It should be thought of as SLoBS “over” BLiSS. Said this way, it is meant to help you remember that SLoBS orders will be triggered or executed when the price is increasing. Whereas BLiSS orders will be triggered or executed when the price is decreasing.
Between the two topics mentioned above, there could be as many as five or as few as one or two questions on the real exam. It is rare that they would not be tested at all. For an exam that is fairly lacking in a concentration of subjects, these tricks can be very helpful.
Keep in mind these SIE Exam focus areas to help get you a few quick points. We highly recommend that you try to pick this low hanging fruit. We know there are simple tricks to remembering these problems, and we’re always happy to help refresh concepts. Contact us if you have any questions. Good luck!