Where did the questions come from?
All questions in this bank are original. They were written specifically for this study aid — no copyrighted question banks (Kaplan, STC, Achievable, Knopman Marks, etc.) were used or referenced.
Content framework
Question topics and their distribution follow the publicly available FINRA Securities Industry Essentials Content Outline. The four sections and their weights:
| Section | Topic | FINRA weight | Questions in bank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Knowledge of Capital Markets | 16% | 160 |
| 2 | Understanding Products & Their Risks | 44% | 440 |
| 3 | Trading, Customer Accounts, Prohibited Activities | 31% | 310 |
| 4 | Overview of the Regulatory Framework | 9% | 90 |
| Total | 1,000 | ||
How they were generated
- First 75 questions — hand-written directly, covering every major sub-topic in the outline.
- Additional 925 questions — written in parallel by 5 sub-agents, each assigned a specific section-and-topic slice (e.g., "options + investment companies + risk", "retirement accounts + margin + AML + regulatory"). Each sub-agent received the existing 75 questions as a style reference, a detailed topic breakdown with exact counts, and a list of factual anchors.
- Post-processing — all batches merged and validated: schema-checked (id, section, 4 options, valid answer index, explanation); duplicate detection by normalized question text; ID uniqueness. Two near-duplicate questions were caught and replaced.
Accuracy anchors
Each sub-agent was given specific factual anchors to prevent drift on rules that changed recently or are commonly missed. Highlights:
- Regular way settlement is T+1 (effective May 28, 2024)
- RMD age is 73 under SECURE Act 2.0 (rises to 75 in 2033)
- Reg A+ Tier 2 cap is $75M in a 12-month period
- FINRA maximum mutual fund sales load is 8.5% of POP
- SIPC coverage is $500K per customer, of which up to $250K may be cash
- Reg T initial margin 50%; FINRA maintenance 25% long / 30% short
- CTR threshold: $10,000 cash in one day; SAR threshold: $5,000 suspicious activity, 30-day file window
- Retail communication threshold: >25 retail investors in 30 days
- Form U5 filed within 30 days of termination
Build log — what was created
This site was built and deployed on September 14, 2026. All commits are in the local git repo at /mnt/c/Development/sie/.
AWS resources
| Resource | ID / name | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| S3 bucket (site) | sie.jerryland.com | Static site files (index.html, questions.json, about.html) |
| S3 bucket (admin) | sie-jerryland-admin | Private prompt queue (blocked from public access, not served through CF) |
| ACM cert | b2d3be9f-… | TLS cert for sie.jerryland.com (us-east-1) |
| CloudFront | ETDSUHZWPC89Z | CDN + HTTPS, OAC-locked to S3 origin |
| Route53 record | sie.jerryland.com | A + AAAA aliases to CloudFront |
| Lambda function | sie-prompt-log | Prompt-input endpoint (in progress) |
Feature timeline (this session)
| Change | Status |
|---|---|
| Static site + 75 hand-written questions launched | Live |
| S3 + CloudFront + ACM + Route53 wired for sie.jerryland.com | Live |
| Practice / Exam / Section-drill quiz modes | Live |
| Question bank expanded to 1,000 | Live |
| Home page shows live bank size (dynamic, no hardcoded numbers) | Live |
| "Full Study Session" mode with localStorage progress + resume | Live |
| Sources / build-log page (this page) | Live |
| Remote prompt-input for further development | In progress |
What runs on your device vs the server
- Your browser fetches
questions.jsononce, then all quiz logic (scoring, timers, progress) runs client-side. Study progress is saved to your browser'slocalStorage— never sent anywhere. - The server (S3 + CloudFront) only serves static files. No account, no login, no tracking beyond CloudFront's default access logs.
Cost estimate
At current bank size and light traffic: roughly $1–2/month — dominated by Route53 hosted zone ($0.50) and CloudFront data transfer. S3 storage for ~600KB is fractions of a cent. Lambda invocations (prompt queue) are within free tier for personal use.