When it comes to the Series 63 vs SIE exam, we would venture to say that the former is easier. In today’s post, we explain what we mean, and why some people think the opposite.
Series 63 vs SIE Exam
For starters, the Series 63 exam is more closely related to a law exam than a finance exam. You have to be familiar with many rules, regulations, and regulators. You also have to be able to identify scenarios where certain regulations or laws apply and when they do not (exempt versus non-exempt).
The SIE Exam on the other hand, is a much broader exam. The SIE covers regulations, but also financial products, securities, accounts, and rules around those that operate in the industry.
The SIE Exam tends to be a harder exam for most people given that most people don’t have a solid understanding of the vast array of financial products out there. For those that do, the law exam can be just as confusing.
Furthermore, financial products come with their own jargon. Not only that, but many products are ineffective, or lead to mediocre long run returns, due to high costs and other characteristics. Such attributes make the average student question why anyone might need to learn about them in the first place.
What To Do
To deal with this, after going through the textbook for each exam, practice questions are always your friend.
For the Series 63 Exam, going through enough questions to understand enough scenarios will help solidify the exceptions to certain rules.
For the SIE exam, it’s mostly getting clear on the jargon. Practice questions will also help here. You ideally want to understand the myriad ways a question can be asked about the same topic. The existence of call options and put options cause headaches for most people for this reason.
If you’re looking to get through either of these exams and want to get the hard one over with first, we recommend the SIE Exam for starters. It’s not overly difficult but is a little more complicated than the Series 63, in our view. For an SIE Exam Tutor, feel free to reach out! Good luck!