Bill Campbell III, CFA, is the principal in a software development and consulting firm in Yorba Linda, CA, specializing in financial analysis and risk management. He is the primary developer of software for analyzing investment portfolios, and for simulating fixed-income markets. His risk management clients have included St. Joseph Health System and Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems.
His education includes Bachelor’s degrees in Business (Accounting) and Mathematics from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), and a Master’s degree in Mathematics from CSUF.
Bill does not have the most unusual background of any CFA charterholder – he’s never been a Los Angeles Rams cheerleader, for example – but he probably comes close; his background is, to say the least, eclectic:
- Six years at PIMCO analyzing mortgage-backed securities, primarily developing prepayment models and rewriting the bulk of their pass-through mortgage and CMO analysis software
- Nine years writing financial software: investment portfolio analysis and bond market simulation
- Three years at Northrop Grumman in project risk management, where he developed software for integrating the analysis of cost and schedule risk
- Twenty years in engineering development at a number of smaller firms, writing software to run numerically-controlled lathes, mills, punch presses, and inspection machines, writing software for navigation using GPS satellites and deep-ocean transponders, designing explosively formed penetrator (EFP) warheads and analyzing their effectiveness against a variety of targets (he really is a rocket scientist!), designing manufacturing and inspection hardware, and analyzing complex 3-D inspection data of free-form surface contours
- Twenty-five years of experience teaching university-level mathematics and finance at Irvine Valley College, CSUF, the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and Chapman University
- Eighteen years teaching and developing curricula for all three levels of the CFA exams
- Seven years teaching project management (cost management, risk management, quality management, problem solving and decision making, and so on)
- Three years teaching accounting as CSU Long Beach
- Level III curriculum manager and lead CFA instructor for Stalla in Los Angeles and Orange Counties
- CFA instructor teaching review courses and writing content for Schweser
- CFA instructor teaching on-line courses and writing content for Wiley
- CFA instructor teaching review courses for Fitch
- Teaching 5-day intensive review courses for the Level II and Level III CFA exams in Zürich and Frankfurt, as well as Level I, Level II and Level III review courses and mock exams in Los Angeles, Irvine, Washington DC, Atlanta, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver, Toronto, Vancouver, Windsor (ON), London, Paris, Geneva, Moscow, and Kyiv, and Level III webinars in Singapore and Malaysia
- Marking Level III CFA morning session practice exams for candidates and providing feedback on how to improve answers
- Writing Level III CFA practice exams
Bill is one of the minority of CFA charterholders who passed each CFA exam the first time he took them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that he is a better financial analyst than others who may have failed the exams one or more times, but it does suggest that he has a good understanding of what it takes to pass the exams. As testimony to his teaching abilities, in 2013 he was dubbed “the oracle of Analyst Forum” by one of the candidates who posts on that website.
Bill is also a professional magician, and has owned, trained and ridden Arabian horses. In September, 2012, Bill was a member of the team representing the United States in an international equestrian world championship held in Mafra, Portugal.
Some of you may know Bill as magician (on www.s2ki.com and www.bogleheads.org), S2000magician (on www.themagiccafe.com, www.analystforum.com, www.reddit.com/r/CFA, and www.chess.com), or S2000magic (on www.bridgebase.com).