Hello Lawrence,

Thank you for your praise, I am so pleased to read that you find this practical and inspirational!

Yes, it is possible to be paid for doing equity research if you have passed Level II - that was my own story. I had only just taken Level I when I was hired as a research analyst. Obviously every firm has their own hiring practices and some may insist on you having your CFA charter. Your work as a physician gives you a massive advantage over most aspiring analysts because of your depth and breadth of knowledge of a particular industry.

I was a bit confused by you asking if you can be paid for equity research pre-attainment of the CFA charter and then saying that you are 'talking about generating reports in [your] own time.' In my experience, getting paid for your equity research without having an analyst position would be very difficult. Just as you getting paid to do another form of medical practice would be very difficult outside of your specialty (e.g. osteopathy vs. oncology). Once you have several research reports created I would approach your local CFA society (i.e. attend an event) and see if one of the kind folks in your local market would consider reviewing your research reports and make recommendations for your next steps on the research analyst pathway.

As for your website...you can create a free blog on Blogger in about five minutes. All you need is a unique URL and a place to publish your thoughts, and Blogger provides all of these things. If you want your own website I would think about an inexpensive webhost (there are too many to name) and use a website template (of which there are many) to create your site. If you get very serious about it you are looking at about a US$2,000 expense to have someone create a site for you.

Best wishes for success!

Jason