The CFA Level 1 syllabus has ten topic areas. Ethics carries the most weight (about 15-20%), followed by Financial Statement Analysis, Equity and Fixed Income (about 11-14% each), with the remaining topics lighter. The exam tests all ten through 180 multiple-choice questions.
This page lists every CFA Level 1 topic with its weight and a one-line summary, so you can see the whole syllabus at a glance and plan where your roughly 300 hours should go. Topic weights are ranges set by CFA Institute and can change between exam windows, so confirm the current figures against the official curriculum before you sit.
All 10 CFA Level 1 topics and weights
| Topic | Approx. weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Ethical and Professional Standards | 15-20% | The Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, applied to scenarios |
| Quantitative Methods | 6-9% | Time value of money, statistics, probability and basic hypothesis testing |
| Economics | 6-9% | Microeconomics, macroeconomics and an introduction to exchange rates |
| Financial Statement Analysis | 11-14% | The three financial statements, how they connect, and ratio analysis |
| Corporate Issuers | 6-9% | Corporate governance, capital structure and capital budgeting basics |
| Equity Investments | 11-14% | How equity markets work, share characteristics and basic valuation |
| Fixed Income | 11-14% | Bond features, pricing as present value, yields and interest-rate risk |
| Derivatives | 5-8% | Forwards, futures, options and swaps, their uses and payoffs |
| Alternative Investments | 7-10% | Real estate, private equity, hedge funds, commodities and infrastructure |
| Portfolio Management | 8-12% | Risk and return, diversification and the portfolio-planning process |
Together, Ethics, Financial Statement Analysis, Equity and Fixed Income make up over half the exam, which is why they earn the largest blocks of study time.
The analytical core
Quantitative Methods and Economics are the toolkit the rest of the curriculum leans on. Quant covers the time value of money - the single most reused idea in the whole program, sitting under bond pricing, equity valuation and corporate-finance decisions - plus the statistics you need to interpret, not just compute. Economics gives the context for markets: why interest rates move, how policy feeds through, and what drives currencies. Financial Statement Analysis belongs alongside them in importance: it is high-weight and foundational, teaching you to read and adjust the income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow statement before any later valuation makes sense.
The asset classes
Four topics cover the instruments themselves. Equity Investments and Fixed Income are the two large ones, high-weight and reusing the time-value and financial-statement work, so they reward front-loading. Corporate Issuers explains how companies are governed and financed. Derivatives introduces forwards, futures, options and swaps at a conceptual level, and Alternative Investments covers assets outside traditional stocks and bonds. The lighter-weight topics are not skippable - their marks add up.
Ethics and portfolio management
Ethical and Professional Standards is the highest-weighted topic and the highest-leverage one: it is built on the Code of Ethics and the seven Standards of Professional Conduct, plus an introduction to the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS). CFA Institute applies an ethics adjustment at the margin, so a strong ethics performance can tip a borderline result, which is why it belongs in your weekly rotation rather than the final weeks. Portfolio Management is the integrating layer, introducing risk, return, diversification and the investment policy statement, and pointing toward Level 3, which is almost entirely about managing portfolios.
Format and pass mark
Level 1 is 180 multiple-choice questions, split into two sessions of 90 questions, each lasting 135 minutes, with a break between. Every question is standalone - a short stem with three choices (A, B or C) - and there is no penalty for a wrong answer, so you should never leave one blank. CFA Institute does not publish a fixed pass mark: a Minimum Passing Score is set by the Board for each exam. Pass rates have historically been below 50%, around 43% in recent windows. Always confirm the current format, weights and rules with CFA Institute.
Plan your way through
To sequence these topics around your own exam date, see the CFA Level 1 study plan, and for how to study each one in depth, the full CFA Level 1 study guide. For a week-by-week schedule built around your date, use the study plan generator. The same ten topics return, tested more deeply, at CFA Level 2 and CFA Level 3.