AFM*** P4 December 2014 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

@andyrenouf said: Ashetray: Of course yeah that would make a lot more sense! God that question 1 has ruined my rational thinking process. Should be studying for P5 on Thursday but that question has made me feel like my brain cells have been violated! Demoralisation doesn't even cover it

My thoughts exactly. To think that I used up all my annual leave just to prepare for this exam n I m back to work today without any rest. For 2 weeks I locked myself up in a room, and ignore my 18 month old baby's knocks n cries who wanted to spend time with me. My friend resigned from her job to prepare for this exam because her boss wouldn't approve her leave. She n I worked hard, harder than we have worked for any other paper and we have never failed an exam before. We are in love with the syllabus because it's so interesting. I question what is ACCA's objective of this exam? To test the knowledge and pass the students who demonstrate good understanding or to generate more revenue by means if additional exam fee. If I could go back in time and do everything again, I will use 10 days to go on vacation and 4 days for exam preperation and the result would be the same.

Very tough paper...last round i missed by 7 marks, this round.....Got to be there again in jun'15....As it is last paper for me, does anyone know whether i can take 2 papers to increase chances? Is P7 a good alternative to P4? I don't seems to be able to pass P4 at all, it is tougher and tougher each time.

It is really not enough time to do Q1! I just do half of part(ii), want to use bsop to calculate the option price but even cannot find the volatility! then i stop and quickly move to next question. All info are not directly given,need to do many calculation, how three hours enough to do all of these? Really terrible!

When I do Q1, I feel I'm a fool. Wanna cry~

This is what I remember from Q2. Current Libor = 3.8% Might increase or decrease by 0.5% This co can borrow at 5.5% or Libor + 0.4% Counterparty can borrow at 4.6% or Libor + 0.3% This co will get 70% of gain on swap, permium 0.1% charged by bank Strike Put 95.50 0.662 96.00 0.902 Calculate the hedge option. Did I miss anything? feel free to add. After recalculating this at home, with sufficient time. I get the following rates: 1. Options rate ranging from 4.36% (95.50 and Libor decrease by 0.5%) to 5.34% (95.50 and Libor increase by 0.5%) 2. Swap rate of 5.04% despite increase or decrease. not sure whether this is right or wrong. I obviously did wrong in the exam, damn. I messed up on how to recognised gain between call and put option and I didn't add the 0.3% to the initial interest calculation.

@ ruma - yes it was 95% & 90% Q1 was a real disaster...I lost a lot of time just trying to sort out which figure to use. At the end I found that 1 hr had gone by and I hadn't done anything concrete. Q2 n Q3 was not so bad but couldn't complete. I forgot how to do swap.

Hi team, do you forward or represent ACCA students isues to ACCA.

Hi, it will be more effective if all of us write to acca.

@keyboard said: hope everyone passes.. paper was easy , i must say.. icompletd 5 minutes before the time allocated... attached additional copies ticked questions attempted.. goodluck everybody

Good for you buddy, good for you, seems like you were able to tackle it well enough ...... But come on, you really dont think that the word 'easy' describes this sitting

@ace91 said: Good for you buddy, good for you, seems like you were able to tackle it well enough ...... But come on, you really dont think that the word 'easy' describes this sitting

Also whats your take on pass percentile falling this session ??? I wrote about it few posts back.

Hi, u r cent per cent correct. The xam has been tougher and tougher each time u appear. I had the same feeling of switching the paper but last night I had chked the pass rates of p5, p6 nd p7. Almost all of them have the same pass rates. Looks like acca want to block students in the last stage as they cannot quit acca at this stage and will keep paying for xams nd membership fees.

Literaly this was a woeful mess, i had prepared so hard for this exam but to no good effect. Seriously i don't think this paper was a doable in even 4 hrs..... Really have wait to wait for June sitting to pass this paper now...

Elia-Shar-eK, my congratulations! You are very-very clever, at least in comparison with me=).But I want to ask you to advise us how to prepare to June session (which books, which revision kits and so on) and how much time it took for to prepare to exam.

@keyboard said: 35 to 40%.. people are smart..they are not dumb...dont trust them

hahahaha , well lets hope for a pass and yup u are right the remaining questions were simple.....question 1 is what everybody struggled with . 35 to 40 % overall pass rate ???? I was asking about the pass grade it self falling below 50% because of the difficulty of the exam .... This does happen but i am not sure about ACCA take on this.

Wow- almost 83% for hard and disaster. Sorry guys. I guess I was right not no choose this paper as optional. Let's see what they have for tomorrow for P5 which I chose over P4....

Hey wasn't that conditional probability? Like one of the recent articles ?

i really worked for this exam .. Too bad the examiner won't see it. Meh.

@keyboard said: pass marks will be 50... they will give leniency in question1 for factual errors only... but i am telling you people are only disappointed because the paper wasnt according to their expectations, they are not saying they didnt attempt well... i am quite sure... every body works hard.. they r just disappointed because they think they cannto score well like 70+...,, other than that majority will be SAFE!

May be thats the case but i believe most work hard for a pass rather than aiming to score high.Well God Bless you to bro :)

@keyboard said: dont congratulate me just yet... God bless you 2.. may you all pass... !

ok, I won't congratulate, though I don't have doubts that you passed, there can be doubts in the quantity of your marks: 80+ or 90+. Yes, I have only to hope on God, on His mercy...Nevertheless, can u advise on tactics of preparation which you chose?

3 hours is not enough for such paper with so many calculations to be made. The examiner could have simplified the questions by providing some figures directly instead of having to compute ALL figures to insert in formulas for calculation. ACCA must take into consideration these as we were not able to do SOOOO MANY in SOOOO LITTLE TIME!!! I sincerely hope that ACCA will take this into consideration. Really disappointed after so much hard work did

@muneebnawaz90 said: Kamdar yes q1 has blacksholes and most of the people missed it because dont know what this examiner actually wants! Instead of volatality he gave probabilities n all that ! This was not just limited to blackscholes. Q1 was completely a diasaster. Used maximum time and almost all of us ran out of time

Hi , how you use the probability to get the standard deviation ?

Now I think that the way to work out standard deviation in Q1 was to work out average return (xx) by multiplying probability with expected returns (x) and add them up . Then we should deduct average return from expected returns (x-xx). Then to work out variance =sum of p(x-xx)^2 Std deviation is square root of variance. This is almost impossible to remember under the exam stress...

Frankly speaking,we should now view Acca as any other profit organization,their main motive z to maximize profit,hence they trying everything possible to make sure that examz should be much harder in order to maximize revenue per student,can't believe myself after having sleepless night preparing for this paper and in the end failing to obtain the passing mark

Me neither, I thought I was wrong... Why I didn't calculate the wacc. Can any body tell me is there a wacc calculation in any of the part in this paper.

Felix: I calculated the WACC to discount the cash flows on the project. Had it at 11% (rounded up) Don't know if that was right or not but it hardly matters as I'm pretty sure I've failed. Was only able to attempt 75% of the paper!

Use all my leave to study for this P4 exam but in the end.....question come out like not his father business....just anyhow set the exam then is you (the student) who need to solve it.....silly examiner. attended revision class, do all past year question, do the whole revision kit with 70 question. in the end........... kill you without notice by put in the words that seem to be understand by certain people only ( examiner ) .....wish you all the luck (examiner ) to set such question which make people (study ) sleepless after the exam.

If you attempt 75-80% of the paper is there any chance of passing? I finished q1, did the theory for q2 and 3, but couldn't finish the calculations part of q2 and q3. left out the options calculation for q2 but managed to calculate the swaps part (couldn't form a conclusion), and for q3 calculation worked everything up to var but left out the discursive bit on Var. guessing I left out up to maybe 10 marks in q2 and up to 10 marks in q3 there.

hi there guys! all in all it was a fair paper, difficult indeed with tricky stuff. I will not blame the examiner for not managing to do it properly despite the fact that it s my xrd attemp after self study. However it is very clear for me that it is not time to think in the exam, it is necessary to be able to do all parts quiqly. for q1, one silly mistake that I done is to consider retention rate 77% instead of 23%. oh, God..such silly and i know the gordon model. it was because i was in a hurry. following that , in the FCF formula, because of this error G was greater than WACC. I calculated WACC instead of using Ke, and i assume since G was greater than WACC that this can not happen in perpetuity , so I use risk free interest rate as a proxy for G. I realised in the cab my mistake. However, can someone tell me in case this is to happen , G grater that Ke or WACC?? what is to be done? just for my curriosity? following that I assumed probability = volatility just to move forward and use real option to value the possibility to sell the project for 50Mil. q2 . My advice was to buy put options since the effective interest rate was lower than the fixed interest paied with Swap. q4. fair question. I can not evaluate based on this but I have a little hope. however, I m definetelly well prepared for this exam. thx!

I really can't understand why people usually keep on starting in Q1 at P level. I always do section B first as it's more transparent to pick out data I need and less complex. I finish it off as soon as I can as it;s visible right away what i can do and what I can't. And with clear conscienece I start struggling with complex Q1 till the very end of exam. Everyone here seems to know how easily it;s to bog down with Q1 and hard to move on. Not to mention the feeling that "I probably screw up Q1" which considerably influneces solving section B. So why many people started with Q1 at this session when at first glance it was obvious that it's nightmare. I'm also sceptic about my passing however at least I have strong feeling that I did whatever I could at given conditions. I attempted 100% of paper and even with the wrong approach, calculations and conclusions I did at least there's a chance of getting mark for trying to solve the problem. Strategy here is not empty word.

@singintheblues said: Entered the exam with all bases covered but was definitely cooked after p7 previous day so this is moot! HOWEVER, overall I felt it was a very unfair paper.a) Q1 was poorly worded and some of the terms used were untypical of syllabus eg FCFE times b) the probability theory was hardly covered at all in my syllabus notes.c) Q2 was confusing, for example the basis on the option future and the fixed/floating choice on the swap. Throw this in with the existing time preessure and it just makes it very difficult. This is my first time sitting this paper and key lesson is do Q1 last. I couldnt really make any decent attempt at Q1 butstill spent a large chunk thinking Iit through. When you're in this position in an exam its demoralising. Did Q2 but didnt have time to consider a collar, just the cap. Q3 was fine. I really like this paper, its the best course on the ACCA syllabus by a mile but I think this examiner needs to think and make an effort to give students a fairer. The simple things are all wrong!!

Leo, truely said. Its the best syllabus on the whole course. I really enjoyed learning this paper.