In 2019, CFA Russia welcomed just over 100 new members. To officially celebrate this, CFA Russia held the 2019 Charter Award ceremony on December 17 at Moscow Exchange (MoEx).

The event featured two experts – Vladimir Nikulin, CFA, a portfolio manager of the Lighthouse Capital investment fund, and Karolina Shalimova, a senior tax advisor at Mazars.

Discussion highlights included a number of interesting themes, such as the future role of AI in the investment profession, predictions on the Russian ETF market, average spending on ETF in VTB Capital Investments and Sberbank Asset Management, some of the pros and cons of owning ETFs and few other things.

The course has all 19 study sessions and a full financial calculator tutorial. The total length of the course is around 60 hours of educational videos in the Russian language.

CFA Association Russia held a fall CFA Level 1 Mock exam on November 23. The society had the highest turnout rate in years.

In one hour-long video, Alexey Debelov, CFA, a long-time Research Challenge volunteer, who served both as a team mentor and judge, talked about the details of the student competition. Alexey shares his own experience on how to form a successful team, work with industry mentors, prepare research and write a high-quality report.

The 2019 – 2020 Research Challenge will feature 34 teams from 26 universities from across Russia and the CIS.

The video focuses on GIPS and the development of the standards in Russia, and seeks to raise awareness among local asset management players as part of CFA Russia's role as a GIPS sponsor in the country.

Moody's senior experts gave a thorough presentation and analysis on the state of Russian banks, as well as how and why the company's sovereign credit rating on Russia changed in February.

Leaders with high emotional intelligence can motivate teams and boost their productivity by as much as 20 percent.

On June 14, CFA Russia held a social event at the Totibadze art gallery to thank all the volunteers involved in the Research Challenge.

About 150 CFA candidates sat for the Schweser Mock Exam held at Moscow State University.

The head of Moody's Russia/CIS Banking Group and the company's two vice-presidents gave a presentation on the factors and processes taken into account while evaluating banks' credit ratings.

Six prominent financial industry experts spoke at CFA Association Russia's annual Forecast Dinner.

Simon Fentham-Fletcher is Chief Investment Officer of Freedom Asset Management gave a thorough review of global macro investment approaches.

Vyacheslav Sinyugin, a professor of one of Russia’s top universities and member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, gave a presentation on the latest developments in anti-age science and biohacking technologies to improve health.

CFA Association Russia organized public speaking classes for the students of Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics to improve their presentation skills prior to the CFA Institute Research Challenge EMEA Regional Finals in Zurich.

Mazars Russia experts, Ali-Sultan Kirgizbaev and Iurii Piunov, showed the ins and outs of using Microsoft’s business analytics service, Power BI, a software that helps to create interactive business reports for investment analysts.

Tactical short-selling and buying certain kinds of Chinese ETFs come with risks, but rewards can be very high.

A team from Moscow State University won the 2019 CFA Institute Research Challenge EMEA final and will now represent the region in the global showdown on April 25 in New York.