I cannot become complacent!!!

I am finding it difficult to really dive deeply into my studies. I've been hitting the material here and there, but this type of work ethic will ensure I fail Level II should I not step it up. Why is it so hard to get motivated? Is it because the test is so far away still? Is it because I am busy at work and I also enjoy my job? Part of the reason is that my social life is just so awesome right now. It's never been this fun before to be me. I hate to complain about that, but I really need to pull myself away from all my friends just a little bit so I can focus more. I have to stay focused on the big picture, and doing that means day by day dedicating myself to this exam. That is all.

upDate

whew that was a stretch without a blog.

looking at my last blog, everything came through, except the fight which is next week.

life is good. i am really enjoying life. i've never been happier.

the new kanye album is out. man i really love this album. i'm hanging on every word of every song telling myself me and kanye are so alike. talk to me personally if you'd like me to map out all the parallels.

got the spiderman dunk SBs.

i have officially started studying. feels good to be back in the mix of mean regression and time series analysis.

i have yet to take the studying to the next level. i am not immersed yet. let's work on that.

Things I wanna do soon

There's a lot to do. I am getting back to studying this month but there's a lot going on that I want to do.

November 15 UCC Park Day
November 21 Associate Team Building Activity in Anaheim
November 21 Benefit Concert
November 22 Fashion Island Tree Lighting Ceremony
November 23 Share the Harvest
Novemeber 27 Balster Thanksgiving at my house
December 6 Pacquiao Fight/Holiday Party

I also really want to go to the Getty. I've never been there and it sounds/looks awesome. I can't wait to deck the halls of my house for Christmas. I'm getting a tree before my Holiday Party.

My mind wanders

I have had a lot of random thoughts in the last hour. Hopefully they don't escape me as I try to blog them all down.

We had a company golf tournament today. I left work before lunch, barely worked 3 hours before hitting the links. Sounds great right? It so happens to be the first business day of November and I communicate a lot of info to clients on the first business day of the month usually. I don't think the golf tournament is a worthy excuse to fall short of our goals in servicing our clients...so after the tournament I showered up and headed back into the office at 7pm, wrapped up around 9:30pm, went jogging in Newport Beach, and here I am showered up again. I am consciously going the extra mile at work. It says something when clients receive emails from you at 9pm.
I am driven and inspired to work super hard. My mom is one of the hardest working people I know. So is my older sister. I was really inspired when I went to the Philippines and saw the house my mom and her family grew up in. It was poverty by US standards, but maybe not by Philippines standards. I can't really say my mom came from nothing, but she definitely didn't come from privilege, and she had some very lean times during her upbringing where food was scarce, but there are people in the Philippines who are much worse off and never are given opportunities. My mom had opportunities, and she went after them. She was blessed and she gave thanks by lifting it up. She came from so little and has created so much. She raised my siblings and me. She has given us opportunities. We could have still been living in the small house in the Philippines but the family worked their way out, no easy task. Indeed, the people next door when I visited were my mom's former neighbors over 30 years ago. That could have been us. But since my mom was blessed with opportunities, she was able to create more opportunity for us. And so I have been given opportunities and incurred some luck, and I am obligated to work hard. It is almost a matter of family pride. This is what drive me.

A lot of people probably think I am a money hungry SOB. Admittedly, compensation and recognition are important to me. But I think the main thing is that someday I want to provide for my family. I don't want money to be an issue. It is an issue for so many families and it takes away from time spend just enjoying each other.


I have a few more random thoughts, but more brief than the essay I just wrote.

I love music. Sometimes I close my eyes, listen, and feel moved. If I can experience this, why am I such a bad dancer and an even worse singer? Shouldn't the passion rub off a little into a glimmer of ability?

Tomorrow is election day. Why do people aspire to be President? I would rather go to the dentist everyday for two years than be on the campaign trail for two years.

What drives other people to work hard? I know what drives me. I spoke to a guy today who said in his previous job he did nothing for three years ("You're kidding?" I said. "No seriously," he said).

I flew on a plane over the weekend to San Jose...on Halloween...in a banana suit.

I am excited about Christmas because I get to deck my own halls. I want to buy a Santa suit.

I have had some pretty great luck. Life is coincidental.

People are doing all this grassroots campaigning on Facebook, getting the word out about where they stand on political issues. Which is great, how it should be...but I wonder if it's all hype because our age group sucks at turning out to vote on election day...we shall see. I am ready to vote tomorrow.

how you feel

sometimes you feel a certain way about someone and it's difficult to tell them. at some point though, you should just say it, at some point you have to. once you say it, it's out there, and it's on them.

be bold.

you can have whatever you like...

maybe you've heard this song on the radio. i think it's one of the nicer hip hop songs to women out there, even though it's mostly about pleasing women with sex and material things, at least it's about pleasing them and not as terrible as the normal pimp-and-ho talk.

I am happy

Things are a little more normalized in work and life. The markets are taking a breather.

I had an absolutely beautiful weekend. To recap:

I went straight from work to Old World in HB for Oktoberfest. It was fun and new. I didn't get too wasted but plenty of people did and it was fun to watch.

On Saturday I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of bushes and flowers. There's something nice about planting flowers, you feel me? It was relaxing but I was sweating it up too. Afterwards I laid down some Miracle Grow and the whole yard smelled like shit the rest of the weekend, but it's getting better now.

I met my buddy Josh and some of his friends at the District where I watched Brandon Vera lose in a decision in UFC. That was a bummer because he is half filipino and reps it with the Philippine flag TAP OUT trunks. I heard he has a huge fan base in RP even though he is basically a middle of the pack UFC fighter. I also heard because of this UFC will have a fight in the PI. That is going to be ridiculous. We finished off the night with some dancing at Woodys, some Newport antics and good conversation.

I woke up on Sunday and went and saw a matine movie, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist." This was a really cool flick. It was funny and quirky and hilarious. This was probably the highlight of my weekend. I also just watched "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." These break up movie comedies are so funny. On a more serious level, it's amazing how down you can get on a break up and how universal it is. These movies speak to the universalness of it. People are ridiculous during break ups. It's just part of the human condition. A friend of mine was kind enough to offer some insight: you cannot experience deep sadness if you have not experienced the relative exuberant happiness. So when you feel down, you have to realize that it is because you have experienced joy and happiness previously.

I went to church Sunday night and also read a bunch of chapters in Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness before I went to bed. A great read.

And that, my readers, is what a great weekend entails. I found myself smiling today for no reason at my desk at work.

Tough night

Everyone has nights like these when you work in the investment business. It is nearing 8pm and I arrived at work around 5:30am. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday though. Right now I am sitting at work blogging, waiting for a phone call from a manager that may or may not come. My eyes slightly sting and I feel loopy and tired. Did I take the bus to camp kill yourself this morning? I enjoy work but right now I am not enjoying not working and waiting for this phone call. I am leaving if it doesn't ring soon.

Overnight Libor

Overnight LIBOR is a part of the investment universe similar to the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom of your house. You never want to think or hear about it. While you think a lot of interior decorating, accent walls, and the color of your carpet or the stone counters in your kitchen, you only think about the plumbing when you have a problem, and water from the upstairs bathroom seeping into the second floor and threw the first floor ceiling can compromise the entire structure. It ruins the carpet, rots the walls, and can cause problems for years to come.

Overnight LIBOR is the rate at which banks charge each other for overnight loans. When we are talking LIBOR, we are talking about the biggest banks in the world. We are talking about the world's highest credit in any type of borrower. All lending, your car, student, home, and home equity loan, the financing on an exercise machine or a queen mattress are benchmarked off of LIBOR. The riskier the borrower, the higher the add on is to the LIBOR rate.

LIBOR is the foundation of lending, and the shortest loan is a one night loan. There is little to no risk when the world's highest credited borrower is taking out a one night loan right? Right now the annual rate on overnight LIBOR is 5.38%. FIVE POINT THREE EIGHT PERCENT annual interest to borrow money for one night. Two key elements of a loan determine how much interest you pay on a loan. These factors indicate the riskiness of a loan. Number one is the credit of the borrower. In overnight LIBOR the borrower doesn't get any more credit worthy. Number two is the length of the loan. The longer the term the more risk. Case in point, overnight LIBOR is one the least riskiest loans. 5.38% is absolutely shockingly high. The world cannot continue to function in a normal manner with LIBOR at this rate. We would like to see a 30 year fixed mortage in the low 6% range, but we are not going to get there on a 30 year loan to an individual American when overnight loans to the world's biggest banks are 5.38%. Think about the implications! Without reasonable financing home ownership will become even more out of reach, existing inventories of homes for sale nationwide will continue to rise, and prices will continue to tumble. Significant wealth destruction is occurring on Main St in the asset where Americans hold the largest component of their wealth...home equity.

I should mention a few asides. Overnight LIBOR is uncollateralized which slightly increases the risk, but the risk spread for that overnight is tiny. On the flip side, LIBOR is self reported by the banks so they are probably fudging a little on the low side. Case in point, you should round up that 5.38% to 6%.

If life with LIBOR at this rate continue, things will get very ugly very quickly in the world. With every HUGE government program introduced the market is able to bring back exceedingly shocking data to prompt more response. Ad hoc responses though of considerable size will no longer help alleviate the problem. The Fed cut rates by 50bps today to 1.5%, a 25% discount in the Fed Funds target rate, and LIBOR blew out to a new record!! That is unworldly and scary. That is some serious gloom in doom. I haven't looked at swap spreads but I heard they tightened which is some good news. I could get into swaps but I am waking up at 4:40am to go to work. After all, what am I going to tell my grandchildren about this? That I worked a normal day, 9-5? No, I'm gonna tell them I worked 14 hour days trying to figure out what the solution was.

Where's my life?

These past 4-5 weeks have blown by. I am working 70 hours a week. I went in on Sunday for 4 hours. Yesterday I went in at 5:30 am, worked until 7pm, played basketball for an hour and a half, went home, showered up, then logged on and worked from home until 11pm. I came in again today at 5:30am. By 5pm I was toast. Absolutely donezo. If you count Sunday, I have worked 31 hours this week and it's only Tuesday! I'm not complaining though, it's good to have a job and my work is incredibly interesting and exciting right now. Each day is bringing new and exciting challenges. There is an element of excitement in the markets for me right now. The markets are in unprecedented space and everything is new, the economy is being redefined.

Last week my friend Ace spoke at the first Liwanag meeting of the UCI academic year about the importance of LOG in his life. He did a really good job and stimulated some self reflection for myself. I realized how amazing it is that my life somehow feels balanced right now despite the long hours and lack of sleep. An hour at Mass on Sunday and a couple hours at a LOG meeting on Tuesday night are so powerful for me because they balance out a 70 hour work week. I am generally in a good mood every single day and am really trying to push myself. After all it's in the thick of the battle that you prove yourself. I feel like I've been given strength. Yo LOG thanks for the love and support!

To top off my ridiculous career commitments, CFA studying will soon be getting underway. Hopefully I can form a support group of others studying for exams and we can push each other. I will pass Level II. By the first Saturday in June, the hard work will have finished. I am getting eager.

On the topic of the markets today I thought about how delevering is unambiguously swallowing up every nook of the financial landscape (stocks, widening credit spreads, Oil!). I started to think about how all of the solutions to the financial crisis vis-a-vis TARP and other policy responses effectively are efforts to re-lever the financial system. Lending and credit is a levered business model and that is what is broken. I need to brush up on my econ to evaluate this response. Over reaching leverage caused this problem, but I need to research the negative effects of deleveraging to 0. I suppose this would create severe deflation. This last paragraph has done a good job of creating a framework in my mind to see that real economic growth is to some degree dependent on ample leverage. So in the brave newly landscaped financial world, the goal of massive policy interventions into market space should be a comfortably levered financial system with regulatory measures to prevent over reaching leverage on the high side to prevent future needs for delevering circuit breakers on the down side when excessive leverage creates houses of cards that all blow away from the same gusts of wind.

Completely unrelated, there are some cats on my street with a banging social life. They are always messing around in the middle of the street. I think there's three of them and they are always playing out in the open. I like it, they are fun.

9/28/09 Dow -778 points, SPX down almost 9%

there has been talk amongst market participants about an umbrella you want to be under. steve leisman spoke of it as a club you want to be in. either you're in or you're out. this club or umbrella if you will is the umbrella of the US government which hovers over institutions that are "too big to fail," or "too big to let fail." the name of the game at this point is trying to figure out who is closest to the handle with both hands firmly clinging to the shaft. if that's not you, you're gonna get wet.

i disagree. when the weather's bad enough the umbrella isn't much help. in a hurricane it rains hard, but getting wet is the least of your problems and an umbrella is worthless. you better be worried about getting swept away. so far we are seeing this is true. whether you fail or are bailed out, investors of these entities are getting wiped out.

if there is a fed umbrella for a select few, the TARP addresses the problem on a much larger scale. the tarp is a disaster shelter. the market needs this, and it may not be enough. i can say with great confidence that if the TARP doesn't pass it will take a loooong time for investors to recover to previous levels. i'm tired of this being called a Wall St bailout. There will be plenty of pain on the Street long after the TARP is put into action. people don't know what's best for them. Main St doesn't know and shouldn't be expected to know how LIBOR effects them. That is a shortcoming of our education system. But Congress has no clue either. That's shameful.

there's also a human side of this. it's gonna get even more human if the TARP doesn't pass. jobs will be lossed, homes will be lossed. i'm working 14 hour days. i don't experience the outdoors during daylight hours. i am going to church tomorrow.

Neighborhood on Fire

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a house of cards, it's safe to say a week later the whole neighborhood is up in flames and everyone is taking some damage. This is the Chicago fire equivalent in our current financial markets. It is truly incredible. Work isn't supposed to be personal, but this is pretty frightening.

AIG just got rescued by the Federal Government. Probably necessary to maintain order but also necessary from a policy standpoint, which is also a political standpoint. If you let Lehman fail, who loses? Lehman employees, investors, people Main Street doesn't feel connected to enough to save. But with AIG it is a different story. The general public is at risk. Picture the headline of someone losing their house in Texas to hurricane Ike and two weeks later not getting an insurance settlement because they did their insurance through AIG. The government doesn't want that on their hands. In my opinion, that is why the government stepped in. They say AIG is more connected but I don't know about that. Bigger balance sheet yet. But larger counterparty exposure risk? Suspect to me...Lehman was THE bond house.

Again, work is just off the wall right now. Weekends, late nights, hours that are not only long but very intense. The whole world is trying to figure out where and how they are exposed to AIG, Lehman, Merrill, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, etc. It is one of those times you really have to put the rest of your life on hold. I'm going in at 5:30am tomorrow morning to be around for clients. I'll be in early the rest of the week. Some people have been coming in at 4am and leaving at night. I admire my colleagues continued commitment. Pride. These are the times we need to push ourselves and make a difference in the world. I try to encourage the discouraged employees to see the big picture.

I'm sure others are experiencing this right now, but I just can't sleep though I really want to because I have an EARLY morning tomorrow. There's a lot on my mind keeping me up at night, namely systemic risk. One of our Managing Directors said it best last week, "You don't make up at 2 in the morning worrying about the fat right tail." Guess he's right, this is the left tail, and in contrast to FNM and FRE's government bailout, this is truly a black swan.

The unthinkable has become reality.

In other news, the Fed held rates today. We are of the opinion the statement is way off the mark with concern to inflation. The Fed can't use the word deflation, but that's the real problem. Not sure I understand how cutting rates would help that, but I definitely agree the statement was way detached from reality.

I got a new phone. Blackberry. It's nice.

House of cards

I just read this article. After passing Level I in December and sitting for Level II unsuccessfully in June, I have some perspective on the accounting methods used by Fannie and Freddie. I'm almost tempted to crack open the Schweser notes and look up the accounting warning signs.
First of all, let me just say this. Perhaps my naivete is an asset here; because this just sounds ridiculous to me having only been in the industry two years, but to others I guess they must have been so used to it. I can't believe how levered the balance sheet was. The Bloomberg article I attached talks about the firms capital. See, when banks or lenders like Fannie and Freddie operate, they make money by borrowing at one interest rate and lending at a slightly higher rate. This is called the "spread" they earn. Also, banks and lenders need to have sufficient capital. That means that any bank has to have a certain amount of money in deposits at all times to comply with law. This prevents panic if people start going nuts withdrawing money. This is A and B of Banking ABCs. A) Borrow short term, lend long term, earn the spread and B) have sufficient capital. Well, FNM and FRE's capital got pretty low because they started losing mad money on all the mortgages people are walking away from. Then people started getting worried. Thus, the market ceased giving the agencies favorable rates. This compressed the spread they earned. When you can't borrow at a low interest rate, the business model is kaputz. And things collapse like a house of cards.

Now here is the kicker, if you have hopefully read this far. Fannie most recently stated $47BB in capital. $20.6BB of this was in DEFERRED TAX ASSETS. Are you kidding me? Is this new information? DFAs are tax credits and you can treat them as an asset because you will reduce your taxes in the future. But when your business model is broken, you don't make money, and when you have no income you don't pay income tax so nearly 50% of their capital was in assets that could more than likely be taken off the balance sheet. At $47BB, they were about $9.5BB above the requirement, but as it turns out when the Feds starting looking at the books, $20.6BB was in deferred tax assets. So for some time up to this point, best accounting practices would have calculated both companies as severely undercapitalized. This just blows my mind. I have a lot of questions. Who audited their financials? How was this acceptable in the past?

That's the macro blog.
Here's the micro blog.

Today was crazy at work. Our Investment Committee worked through the entire weekend. I went into a meeting at 7:30am with the client servicing group and we got debriefed on the situation. We are lucky to be so well positioned across most of our portfolios. That makes our job easier for sure, but I really admire how our firm has been able to focus and concentrate on understanding the recent developments in FNM and FRE so we can properly convey it to our clients. I was just stacked with work all day but I felt fulfilled by my job today. I'm really glad I believe in what we do at our firm and I think we do good work for the world.

I'm also worried about the banking system. The government took the companies into conservatorship, and in the process the common shareholders get nearly wiped out, the bond holders and mortgage holders get made whole (get their money back), and the preferred shareholders unfortunately, like the common holders, don't get made whole. I think this could change. Here's why. A lot of banks hold this preferred paper. It's trading down over 50% from where most owners got in at. A lot of banks hold this in huge quantities. I saw some reports that this is over 20% of some bank's capital. That's not good. The Treasury might have to step in and prop up the preferreds to.

That's all I have for tonight. Again I can't emphasize how impressed I am by my colleagues. Some groups worked all weekend to brief us this morning on the situation. Other groups came in at 5am to prepare for a volatile trading day. I was in the office today for 11 hours getting information out to clients. These are exciting and turbulent times in the bond market. So much has changed from start to now in my two years of working.

This house is burning down

There is a lot going on in the world right NOW. Forget about the election. The federal government, the Department of the Treasury to be exact, is stepping in to seize control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and save the failing companies using Uncle Sam's checkbook. This has serious implications for the bond market. This debt is held in large concentrations on the balance sheets of large institutions around the world. Additionally it has been trading at huge spreads to treasuries lately. Now, a FNM or FRE bond resembles a treasury and spreads are going tighter, especially in the most senior debt in the capital structure. So far it looks like the common shareholders are going to take a bath.

This ties in to the book I am reading right now, Nassim Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness" in which Black Swans are discussed. Black swans are essentially life's unpredictable events. Taleb argues we are conditioned to think that life has causation and predictability. Everyone learns in college about statistical probabilities and the normal distribution. The mere fact that the distribution is termed "normal" alludes to the assumption most people make about the predictability of life. Taleb argues that life's not "normal" and the distribution of life's events are actually more leptokurtic with high impact "fat tail" random events that can't be predicted.

So is this a black swan event? The treasury isn't known to step in and inject government money into a private company. But this was predicted by a lot of the smart money on the Street. We are going to see some huge spread tightening that would definitely be a fat tail event on a frequency distribution chart. What I deduce from this is that you can't reduce this situation to mathematics. How could you? People have tried with differing degrees of success to reduce trading markets to mathematical probabilities. That seems impossible in this situation given that Washington policy makers are directly involved and I can't imagine any mathematical success has been achieved in predicting Washington policy making.

Taleb is sort of onto something. There are hundreds of strategies out there that are only susceptible to losses in the proverbial hundred year storm. However, it's turning out that these storms are coming around quite often. Early 90's housing crash, late 90's Russian Ruble crisis and LTCM blowup, dot com crash, and now the credit crunch/housing crisis. Each one has required "unprecedented" government intervention, most recently FNM and FRE as well as the rescue of Bear Stearns. While market policy setters in Washington preach free markets and limited intervention, they usually seem to feel empowered in their time in office to intervene.

So it turns out that this government intervention and injection of capital into FNM and FRE that the market had been calling for for some time were pushed into action by some recent discoveries into FNM and FRE's accounting practices. Basically these government sponsored entities (GSEs) are like huge banks. Like any bank, they need to have sufficient capital (ie money) to back themselves up. Well, the Treasury hired Morgan Stanley to look over the two firm's assets and found that while legal, the accounting practices used, in accounting lingo, would be what is known as "qualified," ie not up to snuff. Thus, their ailing balance sheets are worse than we thought!

Well I hope you could sit through that and I apologize if you are totally lost. In other news, I had never eaten at Hooter's as of two weeks ago and I have since eaten there twice. Maybe because I live so close to one. Or maybe it's a random black swan type of occurrence. I went to a girl's bday dinner a week or so ago and this weekend my dad is visiting, basically on a vacation from my mom, and he wanted to go because he's never been there. Something about that place bugs me. I really wish the waitresses wouldn't write their names on the napkins. That's so dumb and corny. It was funny to see a kid there with his dad and older brother for his 13th birthday. It's like a puberty party. After that I played night golf with my dad, sister, and brother in law.

Tonight I am 100% alone. I have 3 roommates, all girls, one of which is my sister. I think they are all with their BFs. I am Hans Solo. However, I have a lot of stuff to entertain me. I've got the first season of Flight of the Conchords going, I have a book to read (Fooled by randomness), and a blog. And a thriving multilingual AIM convo...shout out!

blohg blohg blohg

Today was nuts. Really crazy. So goood.

I kicked off my morning by hitting the pavement at 5:45am for a 1.6 mile neighborhood watch run. I just call it that. It's not official neighborhood watch, but I am keeping an eye out. All I really saw was a lady walking her two poodles. My sluggish sweaty butt was probably the scariest thing out in the neighborhood this morning.

So for those readers who are not finance/investment people, today was the first business day of September. It's a crazy day for client servicing people. I was totally swamped from the second I got into work. See, after month end it's important to let the clients know about their account's performance and stuff over the previous month. In a very "Office Space" type of way, my assignments and tasks are itemized with an indication of how long each one should take. Well, according to my assignment list I had 9 hours of work to do. On top of that, I had 6 hours of scheduled training. So that would amount to a 15 hour day. Long story short, I really hunkered down and finished everything about 6pm. It was a rewarding day because I overcame a mountain of work in a reasonable amount of time. Feels good inside.

After work I was double booked. We had a new associate networking dinner at a fancy restaurant. I ordered a rack of lamb on the company and had a few glasses of some red wine that someone cultured picked out. It's always nice when they do these things for us. I had to leave a bit early to catch a bonfire put on by Liwanag. The two events consecutively really juxtapose the two experiences. I was thinking about it on the ride home from CDM. On one hand, the new associates are a lot like me and they are really intelligent. On the other hand, I feel like LOGers are unbelievable people who are better persons than I could ever be. Maybe my grammar's off there but I think I conveyed the point. Maybe I just enjoyed the bonfire more because some of those people can really sing well.

Well. I'm pooped. Good stuff.

V2O

I've wanted to go to this place for a while now and I finally got to go. In case you haven't heard, V20 is known as an Asian club. This night was no exception. Lots of Asians. In the end though it doesn't really make a difference versus any other club. I get the same impression about this place as most other places. It seems like 95% of these people make a full time job out of going clubbing. I see people dropping hundreds of dollars and I can't imagine or see them doing anything else in life besides clubbing, drinking and smoking. That's not to say that I didn't have fun or that there weren't other cute girls there dotted amongst the speaker-box hoes (SBH's are the girls who like to dance on top of speaker boxes in clubs). I had a lot of fun actually. I went for Tracy's 21st birthday finale celebration and it was good to see her have a really good time. The best people to party with are the people who don't party often when they are in the mood to party it up. That was definitely the case here. Cool girl. I danced with another cool girl there and talked to her a bit but I never saw her again the rest of the night. No phone number. Bummer. Shoulda asked up front. Life goes on.

Today is September 1st. 60 days from now I will start studying again. I'm ready. I've had my fill of partying and socializing for a while. I want to pass but I also want to nail it. I want to know this material really well so I can apply it someday. 60 days from now I take ownership.

liwanag

on tuesday nights i go to liwanag. i really like it. a little while ago i made a commitment to grow my faith and try to be closer to my religion and the Catholic church I was raised in. liwanag is the filipino catholic community at uc irvine, my alma mater.

anyway, a little background. after i passed cfa level I in December 2007 i broke up with my girlfriend. break ups are tough. shortly after this i decided to take a vacation and go to the philippines. i had wanted to go since i was a little kid but was never able to. so in march i went and had a great time. i had so much fun. there was another more cultural element to it though. i was amazed by the Catholic presence in the country. Easter in the Philippines is something else. I saw a lot of people offering penance by beating themselves. I also saw three guys get crucified. Intense.

On Good Friday I went to the town my mom grew up in, Guagua. It was pretty neat but I was a bit emotional when I visited the house she grew up in because it was such a humble home. Poverty is everywhere in the PI and it's sad, but it's more emotional when you realize your mom grew up in it, not above it. We spoke to the people next door, who have lived there forever and remembered my mom. It was then that it really hit me how blessed I have been because my mom had risen from such meager beginnings. The same family still living next door reminded me how lucky I was that my family was able to move to the US and elevate their economic status while others weren't so lucky.

When I got back to the US I made a commitment to go to church every Sunday. I had been inconsistent for about a year. I decided to start going to Mass again at Interfaith at UCI rather than at my local parish in Newport Beach because I could relate more to the service and the choir is bringing down the house on a regular basis. So at church a girl named Kirsten mentioned Liwanag and I kind of warmed up to the idea of going to a meeting. I had just got back from the Philippines so I guess I was on kind of a pinoy streak. HAHA.

Liwanag has been a blessing. For a while after the break up I felt kind of empty. I was working crazy hours and I had nothing to come home to or look forward to. My friends were people I knew from work and all we did together was go to bars and party. I felt like I needed something with more substance and Liwanag has really helped me find a better balance. What's even better is that my affinity for the group continues to grow. I really like the people and I look up to a lot of them. In all honesty, I don't think I can ever be as good of a person as some of the people i've met there.

as my studying intensifies in the fall, winter and spring, i want to stay committed to liwanag and mass. balance is necessary even when you're trying to pass the CFA exam. I get a lot out of Mass at Interfaith and Liwanag and I think staying committed to it will strengthen me and enable me more to earn my charter.

a blog with a theme

for some reason i have started a blog. i often find myself with a lot on my mind and the thought pattern is pretty random. one second i could be thinking of something totally random and the next second i could be thinking of a cute girl i know. actually i think it always converts back to cute girls, so it really isn't random. but the thoughts in between thinking of cute girls can be pretty random, like the agency mortgage spread to treasuries right now. which brings me to my next point. but seriously, the spread is 200 bps. we can talk about this more later if you're interested in my work.

i've actually started this blog with the intention of theming it around my pursuit of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, commonly known as the CFA designation. in short, it's a series of three tests given once a year in June to earn a designation that shows you have adequately studied the CFA Institute curriculum. www.cfainstitute.org is you are interested.

right now you might be asking yourself, "is he serious?" more likely, "is he crazy from all that studying?" too early to rule that out. but it occurred to me today that though i am pursuing the charter for work, the pursuit is deeply personal for me. i am investing a lot of my time and energy into achieving this. i've had to sacrifice a lot of the social aspects of normal 23-year-old life. right now i'm actually not studying because the next exam is not until next june, so i've granted myself a vacation until December 1, and i'm trying to get in as much fun as possible. I might even throw myself a going away party before December 1, even though I'm not going anywhere.

Another thought that struck me today is that this can't be too uncommon, for the pursuit of a professional designation to take on profound and personal meaning in a person's life, at least for a short period of time. Surely those studying for the Bar Exam, Med School, CPA, lawyers, nurses, and other similar exams have this same experience. In the long run it's probably for the better, but wow can it be trying in the interim.

so please, if you're still reading, join me along this journey to achieving the CFA designation. It's a bumpy road for sure and quite interesting. maybe you are studying too and can draw inspiration from this. for me, i personally hope this will help me stay focused on my goal, and keep away the distractions (like my every other thought, cute girls). i am happy to take on this challenge, but i know in the two years ahead i am going to struggle to balance the things i find important in my life because this test demands so much of me. There is the CFA exam in June, but i need to still balance studying with family, work, a healthy lifestyle, my faith, and perhaps even a (very) understanding cute girl.

in the long run i think i will earn more respect for myself.

i want to keep this themed around the CFA designation, but there is more achieving it then just hitting the books. Since I don't start studying until December, I'll probably start of blogging about background info on myself and my life outside of the CFA designation. Tomorrow is Tuesday and I'm going to Liwanag. This is a good place to leave off. I can pick it up after the meeting since you'll probably get to hear more about Liwanag in this blog.