NSAD Series 7 - Is it worth Taking????

[Nadine McKenzie]

I amd SCJ, SCWCD and am contemplating taking the Stock Brooker exam (otherwise known as the series 7). I worked in the NY metro area for 3 years and have under 2 yrs of financial experience.
My logic for taking the exam: The series 7 will help me land a Java programming job with a financial company because I will be percieved as having a lot of financial business knowledge? Is this assumption correct? Anyone in the NY metro area with an opinion?

[Mathur Neni]

I hope you would have taken some action on this. I am in the same situation (but not having financial exp).

Please suggest is the Series 7 worth to take to get into financial market?

How about Series 6 or any other certification?

Any suggestions/comments?

Thanks in advance.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Depends on what aspect you are expected.

Honestly, if you want to have a well-recognized certificate in finance, you might consider CFA. Of course, it is more harder and requires you have to more financial knowledge.

Nick

[Mathur Neni]

Nick,

Thanks for your response.

I am in J2EE, but interested in entering/joining as a developer position in finan market. From tech point, I am fine with skills, but they need domain as well.

Initially my thought is to get a certification, so that I can get some knowledge. And atleast after couple of years, I want to be myself in the fin. market.

Any suggestions on certification and other than certifications too?

Thanks in advance.

Mathur

[Nicholas Cheung]

I don't have much ideas on certifications in Finance, but for well-recognized professional qualifications, the most famous one should be the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), some will recommend the FRM (Financial Risk Management). They are managed by 2 famous institutions: AIMR and GARP.

Honestly, I have not heard of those organizations mentioned in this thread, and I am not sure how valuable for those cert. holders. Depends on the area you want to go for, you can make the right choice. For CFA and FRM, they are very specialized in Financial areas, and thus, if you just want to do IT in financial world, they might be too tough for you.

Nick

[Mathur Neni]

Nick,

Thank you very much for the information. I will pursue further on this.

Thanks,
Neni

[Chintan Rajyaguru]

CFA and FRM are way to advanced and will not help at all if the intention is to land an IT job within financial industry. Usually, the MBA students who are interested in investment management or investment research or quantitative finance would pursue CFA. People who are trying to change career to finance also pursue CFA but it is very difficult to pass without any financial experience. It is a 3 part exam and takes 3 years to complete. Additionally, you don't even get a CFA designation until you have 3 years of experience in finance (not in IT in finance).

I won't comment anything on series 7 becuase I don't know anything about it. No doubt the domain knowledge helps. If I were you, I would also consider taking couple of classes in a community college as that will help with your planned future move to finance while showing interest and knowledge in the domain. Companies need domain knowledge to make sure (i) You understand financial buzz words and (ii) You quickly grasp the underlying business. At any given point your IT knowledge is always more important than finance knowledge so make sure that is covered and then improve your finance knowledge. If you mention, finance knowledge in resume, there will be questions around that and as long as you can answer them, you should be okay.

Use resources such as
www.investopedia.com
www.fool.com
www.wsj.com
www.cfo.com


Hope this helps.

[Mathur Neni]

Your info is helpful and the links too.

In the finance domain, I am able to see many areas like: Fixed Income/Mortgage/Brokerage/Banking/Stock Trading/Securities/equities/mutual funds etc.,

Any thoughts on which finance area uses more of J2EE. Sorry, I know this question is vague. My thought behind this vague question is to get an idea on which area I need to proceed to get good knowledge and concept-wise.

Any suggestions or comments, thanks in advance.

Thanks,
Neni

[Nicholas Cheung]

So far, none of them can be implemented purely in J2EE because you will need to interact with the Exchange's system using FIX (in Hong Kong).

For those that are not required to work with FIX, the business logics are implemented in AS400.

Nick

[David Ulicny]

There aren't pure Java solutions? For example for core banking system?

[Nicholas Cheung]

For banking system, in Hong Kong, all business logic are built in iSeries or pSeries, which act also as the database. Thus, you have to use MQ to connect the Java part and HOST (the name conversion used in Hong Kong).\\

It is difficult to have pure Java solutions because Java runs very slow in HOST, and the current "stable" version of JDK is 1.2 only. I am currently rewriting some of the CL/RPG program modules using Java, but it comes out lots of issues to be handled.

Nick

[Mathur Neni]

Chintan, Nick, and David,

Thanks for all the inputs.

Regards,
Neni

[Munish Dabra]

I'll series 6 or 7 from NASD are the right ones...but i guess you might not be able to appear for that as prerequisite as per NASD for the certification is:
"You must be sponsored by a firm who is a member of the NASD or is a Self Regulatory Organization (SRO)."

[Anatolyan Ideus]

Chintan Rajyaguru wrote:

Use resources such as
www.investopedia.com
www.fool.com
www.wsj.com
www.cfo.com


Hope this helps.

There are no doubts that NSAD Series 7 is worth taking Also I would add this Series 7 Preparation App to this list of helpful resources.