CFA Level I

Topic 1 — the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, which apply to every candidate, charterholder, and member firm.

Topic 6 of the Level I curriculum — the structure of equity markets and the vocabulary of stocks, dividends, repurchases, and equity risk measures.

Topic 4 — reading and interpreting the financial statements, from the income statement and balance sheet to cash flows, accruals, and ratio analysis.

Topic 7 — debt securities: bond mechanics, pricing, yield measures, and the risks (interest rate, credit, liquidity) that move bond prices.

Topic 10 — putting it all together: risk and return, diversification, the efficient frontier, performance measurement, and the investment policy statement.

Topic 9 — assets outside traditional equity and fixed income: private equity, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure, and commodities.

Topic 5 — how firms are organized and governed, how they raise capital, and how they make investment and financing decisions.

Topic 3 — microeconomic foundations and macroeconomic indicators that drive financial markets, from supply and demand to inflation, business cycles, and trade policy.

Topic 2 — the statistical and analytical toolkit underlying the rest of the curriculum, from descriptive statistics to hypothesis testing and regression.

Topic 8 — financial instruments whose value derives from an underlying asset: forwards, futures, options, and swaps.