CMG...
very entertaining I must say!
When you say that you find it funny how guys in Kenya go to school to study CFA, ypur logic may be abit flawed. as emly said the lack of market knowlede is wide in Kenya. the central bank doesnt even do spot rates!! very few embedded options and the reason for this is the lack of adequate legislation to back complex investments. If the CMA doesnt understand them they wont approve. second thing the market that can absorb these instruments is still too small. NSE still has 53 companies listed and current trends show many companies outside the NSE shying away and instead going for private equity (currently the "in" thing).
My point is this, I have done until, CFA II (studied by myself btw)and that knowledge sets me apart from many of my colleagues who pride on being 'analysts'. I am a utility to my company and I know that coz lets face it, in Kenya, having even done level 1 you join an elite club. the knowledge may not be broad but it gets you the respect that many others cant couldnt and would never dream of getting. I'M NOT Trashing your Financial Engineering or any other technical course I'm simply saying that it depends on your personal goals. if your limit is the sky and you get there well and good. if your current environment is changing then you should adapt to it

dkuyoh..
Going to college for CFA exams has nothing to do with Central Bank or Nairobi stock exchange or CMA. Even in western schools derivatives teaching in universities are as limited as, I guess, developing countries. Like I said before schools are not suppose or are not expected to teach you everything but are expected to give you enough material to enable you to go out there and find out for yourself. CFA exam, though you make it sound like rocket science is not that hard, just to clarify, from the day I register for CFA LEVEL 1 to the day I passed CFA LEVEL 3, added to 27 months( 2yrs and 3 months) and even to show how possible it is, when I was sitting for level one I was a fulltime undergraduate student and when I was sitting for 2 and 3 I was a fulltime worker and alot of people have done it. My point is, Kenyans are school loving people, people go to school even when it doesn't make sense, even when it doesn't add value to their knowledge. If you wanna be rich, how can you be rich when you're throwing away money for things that you can actually do it for yourself?

Me too. I agree.

whether i go to school to study cfa or not really does not matter the greatest gift one can ever get is the gift of knowledge,what i do with the knowlegde is what really matters.

why is it reasonable to expect that derivatives based on a commodities index constructed using a broad range of basic commodities would be more liquid at longer maturities than derivatives based on individual comodities?