Series 65 FINRA Exam Introduction

Welcome to the Series 65 Exam introduction, perhaps Series 65 prep guide, of course, I got one question for you. Are you ready to get this God awful thing out of your life? I’m sure you are. Well, you’ve come to the right place. I always like to tell people that you come in here. You’ve heard 147 horror stories about this wonderful test of which only about 32 of them were actually true. OK, so we’re going to start today with our introduction of the series 65.

What is on the test, what you can expect from the test. And of course, once we get into the content, what those contents looked like once they’re asked in those very tricky test questions. So first, let’s talk about the test, OK? It is basically divided into four categories when you pass your exam, you’ll get a printout hard copy printout of your scores and will be broken into four different areas. One area, of course, would be the economic factors and business information. There are 20 questions in this category on the test. Also, the next area will be investment vehicles. Thirty-two questions in this category, client recommendations. And investment strategies. This is a pretty big category. Thirty-nine questions on there and of course, everybody’s favourite topic, laws and regs, which again is another thirty-nine questions. So you see, you have won a total of 130 questions. You have three hours to complete the test, which should be more than enough time. Most of these exams give you plenty enough time to do this.

OK, now don’t be surprised if you answer an additional 10 experimental questions, you won’t know which one these are. They are interspersed without the test you are not graded for nor against these 10 questions. So you will in fact answer a total of one hundred and forty questions, of which only 130 are graded. All those 130 questions you must answer any ninety-four. Correct. Doesn’t matter which ninety-four any ninety-four will do because seventy-two per cent gets this God awful thing out of your life. And that of course is our goal. You see there’s really only two scores on any of these exams. A "P" or "NP" pass or not pass. So. Seventy-two per cent or above anything above gets this thing out of your life. That’s our goal. Doesn’t matter if you get an 83 or 92. A 77 doesn’t matter because those are all "P". And that’s what we’re looking for right now. You know, we want to shoot for something a little bit above seventy-two. You know, let’s shoot for the eight-ish somewhere around there. That’ll give us a little room for error. OK, so one hundred and thirty questions. Ninety-four. Correct. For a total score of seventy-two per cent or better. Gets this thing out of your life. OK, now how do you effectively study and pass your exam. It’s one of the most common questions I get. So when I first got hired a few years ago at a brokerage firm, the boss said welcome Ottice to the team.

Here, read this. Take a test. I said, sure, OK. He hands me the 600-page series seven textbooks. That’s all I have had nothing else. I read that thing from cover to cover. And let me ask you, how much are you going to retain reading a 600-page textbook cover to cover? My goodness. Right. So I had to read the thing actually three times the third time through. I actually took notes on each section.

For me, writing that down helps me to remember. It helps me to retain that information and more importantly, to recognize that in those sick and twisted test questions that these guys like to write. OK, so today, however, there are so many more resources that you can use that are at your disposal. For example, a video, of course. Right. That’s one resource that you can use now, depending on which textbook you’re using, because they’re all a little slightly different. Right, whether you have Kaplan’s or Pass Perfect or STC or Test teachers or series sixty-five for Dummies or what. Yeah, they’re all written a little differently. Their test questions are a little different and they’re outlined a little differently as well. Many of them may or may not actually come or be broken down into these four categories. They might be chopped up even further than that. So it’s hard to tell. However, no matter which way they do it, here’s how you want to best pass or study for the 65 and then the exam for that matter.

Well, test one. You got to get through that textbook. I why no one publisher out there.

Their textbook is seven hundred pages for one hundred and thirty question exam. My goodness.

That’s how you get through all of that let alone how are you going to retain that information. However, you’ve got to get through this material somehow however. But instead of going cover to cover like I had to. OK, here’s what we want to do. Take it unit by no matter how they’re broken out in your textbook, say, unit one. Right. So read many of the publishers also have videos. And of course, you have to ask exam first video as well to help you guys go through that one, read, watch a video and then I’ll save you. Twenty-five questions on Unit one. Only and only 25 questions, not a hundred and twenty-five questions. Twenty-five is enough. Besides, we’ll have a chance we’ll have an opportunity to get through some more of Unit one questions a little bit later. But at this point, all we’re trying to do is to retain some of this information and get some practice, very valuable practice on testing. OK, so unit one. Twenty-five questions then of course, on the unit to write, read, watch a video and then do 25 questions on Unit two alone. Then what if we did 30 questions on units one and two combined. Some of the publishers, again, depending on which publisher you have, will allow you to customize your practice exams by combining any and all of these units. That is a nice feature to have because again, as you’re building, we’re also going to be reinforcing the earlier material so we slowly build it as we go. Once you finished Unit two, unit three, we watch videos, write twenty-five questions on Unit three, then 40 questions on units one through three. Right. Just repeat the process.

Unit four read videos, 50 questions on units one, three, four. So again, we’re reading right. Remembering retaining information and reinforcing as we go. I like to refer to this as the inverted pyramid. Right. You slowly, gradually build while you’re reinforcing that. I’m telling you, it sure beats reading that thing cover to cover because again, how much of that you’re going to retain just powering through 700 pages of text. My goodness. Right. Will end up having to read the thing three times at least. I often have times have people come up to me and says, yeah, I’ve read the entire textbook. I said, wonderful. Now how much do you remember? Could you pass the test? And they all say no. Right. Writing 700 pages. How are you going to do it now? Once you powered through that material, can the inverted pyramid our next step, if you can, is to take a class, because now what we’re going to do is take this content, put a little context around it so that you can better understand it. OK, but better yet, be able to recognize it in no sick, twisted test questions that you’ll see on the test. That’s the next thing you want to take a class. Hopefully the class. You take its test class, of course, but you got to find a class no matter what class, whether it’s live online, whatever. You’ve got to find a class that’s good enough. And I know some classes. Those guys just sit there and read this outline to you, oh, my goodness, I can do that at home. So you need a little context around the content. OK, that way you can better understand it.

And now how is that concept going to be asked? What’s it going to look like in the test? Because that, my friends, ultimately is the bottom line. You have to recognize the concept and be able to answer it.

So the class is meant to be a bridge between your textbook material and the real test because I’m going to tell you right now if you don’t already know, they aren’t the same. No one is allowed to duplicate the actual test questions by law. And it’s actually something that’s scrutinized pretty closely. When you go into the test, you actually have to sign a little piece of paper that says, I swear in blood, that I will not divulge anything I see on the test in order to maintain the integrity of the exam. So they scrutinize it pretty closely. So there is a difference between your test, your textbook material and the real test. So the class hopefully is going to create a bridge between those two. Hey, we’ve got to do two things. We got to know exactly what concepts show up on the test and more importantly, how they show up. OK, in other words, here’s how I like to illustrate in these materials or any other class, all we’re going to be talking about is what’s on the test, how it most like. He shows up on a test and how you should answer it on the test. That’s it one that’s all we have time for. And two, if not all, we care about what’s on the test. I tell people pretty bluntly, I’m not here to educate you. I’m here to get you to pass the exam also because if you try to equate some of this stuff to what you actually do in the real world, oh, my goodness. Because every firm has its own little idiosyncratic rules and regs, typically, I hope anyway, above and beyond the minimum regs of the regulators.

OK, so you can’t really equate this to what you do in your job on a day to day basis. I’m going to repeat that. Don’t try to equate this to what you do in the real world. It doesn’t work like these tests are for one purpose and one purpose only. They are merely a gatekeeper to the industry, essentially, so people who, you know, walk off the street can’t come in as this thing. You got to know your stuff a little bit, OK, but it’s not testing you on your daily job. OK, so again, what we’re going to do and hopefully any class will do this right, is to concentrate solely on what shows up on the test, how it most likely shows up in the test and how you should answer it on the test, not what you do in your real-world right now. That also brings up another very important point. OK, how to take a standardized multiple-choice exam. I tell every one of my classes knowing how to take this test is easily the difference between a 68 and a 78. These standardized structured exams have a set structure to them. They all do. I think the people who write these exams all graduated from the same college. They all have degrees in psychometrics to believe there’s actually a degree for the test, right? Right. That’s pretty important. I mean, think about all the things academically in our careers that we’ve had to do right now, SATs and degrees and all of those standardized exams we’ve taken.

Well, this is the same way. And when’s the last time you’ve taken a multiple-choice exam? So there’s a structure to it. And the more you know about the structure, the more it’s going to help you answer these tough questions correctly. OK, so we have to know how to take the test. Now, just very briefly and we’ll discuss this throughout the course as we’re in the content. But essentially all multiple choice exams are written in a linear format now.

Simply put, that means A plus B equals C, OK, that’s a linear format. So you have to find it somewhere in the test. Question the two variables. And then, of course, those two variables are always equal. The correct answer, for example, very simply, two plus two equals four, that’s a linear format. That’s how these tests are structured. OK, now, however, they like to throw a lot of superfluous and distracting material to take you away from the A and the B or the two plus two. OK, and you got to sort through that say that’s why it’s important. One of the most important traits.

Keep it simple, please.

Ok, you got to keep it simple. You can’t over-analyze these things because you will then fall right into their little trap. All this distractive information is going to distract you away from the correct answer. Now we know two plus two is four, right? Simple. So there’s an answer choice that says the square root of sixteen. There is an answer choice that says it’s forty-three. There’s an answer choice. It says, well, two plus two is four, except when there are two full moons in a month ending in the letter R and three, you sit there and think that sounds kind of reasonable, sounds logical to your brain. So guess what. You’re distracted or are attracted to an incorrect answer. They throw a number that your brain has been looking for along with his other Mess, and then, of course, the next answer would be 61. So obviously, there are two answer choices that you can easily eliminate. And it always comes down to two man. Everybody who comes out of these exams are always saying that they can always come down to two of the four answers. But those two are very close. Right. For example, there’s two four, four months ending in the letter R or the square root of sixteen, which, of course, is four. So they even disguised the correct answer a little bit. So if you get caught up in all of this other distracting information, right, you get away from two plus two is four.

That’s how we have to take these exams, it’s a linear format. Now here’s the good news. About 75 per cent of us are linear thinkers. Two plus two is four. So you get a little practice and again, see through all of these practice questions, that’s what you’re practising, OK, whether it’s in your textbooks or on the real test doesn’t matter. You’re going to be practising this. You’re going to be seeing the structure so that you’re going to be better prepared come test day when you sit in front of the computer with the bright lights. Right. And the eye in the sky and all of those other stressful things that they’re going to put you through, you’re going to sit there and say, I’ve seen this guy, you’ve recognized the structure, you’ve been practising it, and it’s going to be a lot less intimidating to you come day, So what you’ve been through the material you take a class kind of like test keeps video course. Once you’ve been through the course, then the next step you want to do a course is to simulate the test-taking environment, the basketball laughs. You want to go through practice finals. And again, here’s where the publishers really differ, the way in which they write to test questions.

Your scores. I know people have been scoring eighty-seven from the practice while they go in and test and they get a 64. That doesn’t help us much. We want to find some practice finals that will correlate best to what you actually score on the real test. Kasky exam prep has a practice final that correlates pretty well within about five per cent generally of what you’re going to score on the test. Some of the more major publishers, the ones that have been around for a long time, they’re pretty good, too. They’re usually within five percentage points, most times all other things being equal. You know, not including test anxiety or any other things that you are inflicted with once you go into the test centre. OK, so the practice finals are a pretty good should be a pretty good indicator as to where you are now. Also, when you go through the practice finals, some publishers will actually break that score out into the different components, helping you to identify where your weak areas are remaining. Then, of course, once you find one of those weak areas, then you can go back into the practice questions or the textbook. Not a bad idea to help reinforce that area. Then you can take another find the weak area, reinforce that that’s the best way to do this.

So that when you go into the centre, sit down in front of that computer and you say to them, bring it on, you’ll be more prepared for it.

Very few surprises, hopefully, because you know what the structure looks like. You’ll know what the content is and you should have no problem with it. It won’t be as intimidating to you. OK, now we all have some level of test anxiety, some more than others, some less than others. Right. I mean, I’ve taken test all my life. I’ve been through all of these exams and there’s a little bit of stress and anxiety for me. But there really hasn’t been a lot to me. To me, you know, it’s it doesn’t judge me on the content of my character. So I really don’t care that much. And I’m a pretty good linear thinker. So I’ve always been a pretty good test back then, whether you are or not a good test or whether you have anxiety or not knowing ahead of time what this thing is going to look like, what this thing’s going to feel like and what it’s going to smell like before you go in helps kind of lower that anxiety a little bit. OK, so OK, practice, take a class practice finals, be as prepared as possible, go in and pass the test. One last thing again, because of this structure, this linear structure, the exam, I want to leave you with a couple of things. One, I’ve already told you, keep it simple. The more you think, the more you say paralysis by analysis. Right. We’ve heard all those cliches. That’s number one related to this, of course, would be you take the test. Don’t let the test take you back. Remember, there are Trappes. There it is, luring you, you know, I call it Alice’s rabbit hole, right? Sometimes you get so nervous, you start analyzing every one of these and your choices and you start to see which one rationally sounds best to me.

Right. And you know that once again, you’re just letting the test take you stay with what you know, two plus two equals four. It always has and always will. OK, don’t let the test take you to me. The answer lies here, not here. OK, two plus two. Oh, that’s right. It’s four. OK, now what answer says for there is I mean I’m only going to sit there and rationalize and analyze every one of these choices because you’re going to you know what’s going to happen to you. Right. Fall right in Alice’s rabbit hole. OK, now I’m not here trying to scare you again, just the opposite, because the more you know, prior to going into the test, the less intimidating that testing is going to be. OK, that’s why I tend to be a little bit blunt in the beginning. I want you to know exactly what this thing is going to look like, what it’s going to feel like and what it’s going to smell like. Why don’t you go into the test? OK, now that concludes the introduction.