Pass the 65: A Training Guide for the NASAA Series 65 Exam (First Books Training Library) 7th Edition

UPDATE #2 Dec 29, 2012: I passed the 65 today with a score of 92, and the very first thing I wanted to do was to come write ANOTHER review of this abysmal book, just to get my frustration and annoyance out of my system. But Amazon seems to limit reviews to one per customer per book.So let me just reiterate: THIS BOOK IS AWFUL. Almost NONE of the questions I got on the actual test were material addressed by Walker in this book. Had I relied on the book alone, I never would have passed. I've also come around to the same conclusion that was alluded in the long thread of comments on the prior edition of this book: All the glowing accolades in the positive reviews seem to follow the same writing style, and I am guessing they are either frauds or Walker is asking students in his classes to write them.As I and several people have said before: If you want to pass the '65, forget this pathetic book, and go to [...], and buy the "QBANK" product. Important: Don't make the mistake I did and buy the $25 "Practice tests" product - that only lets you take TWO practice tests. You want the $75 QBANK, which allows you to take an unlimited number of practice tests. The stuff on Kaplan just about exactly mirrored what was actually on the test. Walker and this miserable book are out in left field. I can't find words to communicate how strongly I recommend AVOIDING this lousy publication.UPDATE: Now that I've moved on to the Kaplan online practice tests, I've realized that this book (or any other book for that matter) is a complete waste of time. If you want to pass the 65, go to kfeducation.com and buy the "Qbank" product for $74.50, and just start taking practice tests. For each question you get wrong, the system tells you the right answer and provides an explanation of why it's the right answer. Just take a few practice tests and you'll be fine. Not only was this book not helpful, but there is a LOT on the test that is never even covered in the book.--Original review follows--I'm dubmfounded by the 40+ glowing reviews for the previous version (although there was also commentary in those reviews about some of them looking suspicious). This book is mediocre at best.Walker repeatedly recites an SEC or FINRA document that is clear, concise, and written in plain, easily understood English. Then he adds a section of his own at least 3 times longer which he calls the "Plain English Translation". But the original version was already written in plain English, and was far more concise! He adds distracting, time-wasting analogies and metaphors that simply don't help in any way. They waste time and space, nothing more. He also seems to go to great effort to add humor in an attempt to make dry material more interesting. But his humor isn't terribly entertaining, and I'd much rather have had a SHORTER book that left out the corny jokes and just focused on test prep.The really frustrating part is that the most essential parts of the book are buried in these long, boring passages of irrelevance. The test is full of "trick questions" that you need to know about. For example, there is a question that asks about a business that makes a large capital expenditure using bank financing to buy equipment, and the question wants to know about how much "cashflow from financing" was involved. According to NASAA/FINRA, "cashflow from financing" refers only to primary market issuance of new debt or equity securities, not to bank loans, so the answer is none. Obviously you'd never get that right if you didn't have Walker to tell you what they're looking for. But these critically important nuggets of information are buried in a SEA of irrelevant, unnecessarily long-winded attempts by Walker to translate something that was already written in plain English into what he thinks is "Plain English". Frankly, his version is less Plain and readable than the original he's "translating" in most cases.Walker's own financial knowledge seems quite suspect as well. He reinforces the popular myth that an investor who suffers a principal loss in a long-dated fixed income position due to rising interest rates never actually loses anything if they hold the position to maturity. (This popular myth comes from ignorance of opportunity cost). And his attempt to explain the difference between price- and cap-weighted indices clearly reveals that he doesn't understand the material himself. He also fails to correctly distinguish Beta from R-squared.In summary, this book would be better titled "The seriously clueless dummy's guide to the 65". If you really can't understand the various plain-English documents from NASAA and FINRA, and suffer such an extreme deficit of financial acumen that you need someone like Walker to spoon feed you a dumbed-down version of the concepts that will let you just barely scrape by and past the test despite not really knowing the material, this book is for you. But if you already know the Finance 101 stuff and just need a concise study guide that highlights the trick questions and enumerates the specific "testable points", you will likely encounter, you're probably going to be very frustrated by Walker's failure to present that information concisely.Did you understand what I just wrote above, or would you like me to repeat myself three or four more times, using dubiously relevant analogies and metaphors to illustrate points that were already clear? If your learning style is such that you need a few more repeats of the same ideas, expressed through story-telling and irrelevance, this book is for you.

I think this is an excellent study guide but I also believe it's important to provide a few specifics about my situation so you can gauge whether it is likely to work as well for you. First, I am changing careers from corporate finance to financial advisory, so I am not a newbie to the world of finance and investments. The fact that I have an economics degree and MBA in Finance no doubt gives me a leg up on most people taking the Series 65. That said, there are a couple of areas (client recommendations & laws and regulations) where that background provided little benefit, and this book filled the gap capably.Also, you should know that I didn't pick up the book the weekend before the exam. In addition to reading the book cover-to-cover, I re-read and studied areas where I felt less than confident. I also took practice exams on [...] (a site I also recommend for learning any concepts not fully covered in this book). In all, I probably spent 12-15 hours studying, in addition to the first reading of the book.Strengths:o Comprehensive (but not perfect) coverage of the test materialo Book follows the outline of the NASAA outline for the Series 65 examo Impressively up-to-date with current laws and issues (more so than Investopedia)o Quite readable (the author makes a valiant attempt at humor, not always being funny, but rarely being boring)Weaknesses:o Not entirely exhaustive - the exam will come up with situations and use language that will be somewhat unfamiliar to those relying solely on this book (as I did for two of the sections)o Not a lot of practice exam material - just 130 questions. As mentioned above, I supplemented this with Investopedia, which had about 300 additional questions (and very flexible practice modes).Bottom line: I passed with 90% and, more importantly, I scored 87% on Laws and Regulations, the most unfamiliar and difficult area for me by far. So with appropriate effort, this book can work.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone taking this exam. You can't beat it for <$60 here on Amazon and it is enough to help any reasonably intelligent individual pass the exam. Notwithstanding, I suggest spending the extra money to get a couple of the author's practice exams. They probably are not necessary, but it is comforting to rate yourself to know how much more studying you might have to do. As for the book...On the plus side: I give kudos to the author for covering the expansive material that is covered by this exam. Moreover, it is written quite clearly, almost bordering on a '...for dummies' type of book.On the neutral to downside: His writing style might include too many instances of humor which some might find annoying (not me but some reviews indicated as much). There are also a few blanket statements which I don't agree with (note: I personally read very technically/literally). Notwithstanding, these things don't take away from the content.While I gave this a 5 out of 5, here are a couple things I might suggest to improve this book:- Break the 'sections' into smaller pieces and perhaps use numbering/lettering or better formatting for the headers + sub-headers- Include prefaces for each section (and better summaries)Lastly, unrelated to this author/book, I have to say that the actual exam I took was the worst written exam I have ever taken. There were multiple typos, misspellings, instances of poor grammar, and questions that were almost incomprehensible. Accordingly, I would strongly suggest that test takers think about what point the question is trying to ask before asking and also apply as many test taking skills as possible.Thanks for the book Mr Walker and good luck to all those taking the exam.