The 6 Hardest CFA Level I Topics (2026) and How to Fix Them

If you are sitting CFA Level I in the November 2026 window (11 to 17 November), you have about five weeks left. That is enough time to fix two or three weak topics properly. It is not enough time to re-read the whole curriculum. So the question that matters now is which chapters cost candidates the most points, and what to do about each one.

Some context first. CFA Institute reported a 45% pass rate for Level I in February 2026, 39% in May 2026 and 43% in August 2026. The ten-year average is about 40%. First-time candidates did better than that: 50% in February and 49% in August. Most people who fail are not short of intelligence. They are short of points in a few heavy, tricky topics, and they find out too late.

This guide covers the six areas that cost the most. For each one you get the weight, the chapters involved, why candidates lose points, a two-minute check you can do right now, and what to do with the weeks you have left.

The 2026 Level I topic weights

Difficulty only matters when it is multiplied by weight. Here are the official 2026 ranges.

The exam has 180 multiple-choice questions with three options each, split into two sessions of 2 hours 15 minutes. That is 1.5 minutes per question. Every topic below is hard partly because it tempts you to spend three.

1. Financial Statement Analysis: the biggest source of lost points

Weight: 11–14%, about 20 to 25 questions.

Chapters that cause the most trouble: Analysis of Income Taxes, Analyzing Statements of Cash Flows I and II, Topics in Long-Term Liabilities and Equity, and Analysis of Inventories.

Why candidates lose points. FSA is not hard because of the maths. It is hard because one small judgement decides the answer: is this difference temporary or permanent, does this cash flow belong in operating or financing, does this inventory method raise or lower the ratio. The questions are built so that the wrong answer is the one you get if you know the formula but miss the judgement. IFRS and US GAAP differences add a second layer, for example where interest paid can be classified on the cash flow statement.

Two-minute check. A company buys equipment for 100,000. For its accounts it uses straight-line depreciation over five years, 20,000 a year. For tax it deducts 40,000 in year one. The tax rate is 25%. After year one, what does it report?

The carrying amount is 80,000 and the tax base is 60,000. The carrying amount is higher, so the company will pay more tax later: that is a deferred tax liability of (80,000 − 60,000) × 25% = 5,000. If you said "deferred tax asset", you have the direction backwards, and that exact reversal is what the exam's wrong options are built on.

What to do now. Stop reading FSA and start classifying. Take 30 questions on cash flow classification and deferred taxes, and for every miss write down which judgement you got wrong, not just the right number. Two or three patterns will show up quickly. Fix those.

2. Fixed Income: heavy weight and heavy calculation

Weight: 11–14%.

Chapters that cause the most trouble: The Term Structure of Interest Rates: Spot, Par and Forward Curves, Yield-Based Bond Duration Measures and Properties, Yield-Based Bond Convexity and Portfolio Properties, and Curve-Based and Empirical Fixed-Income Risk Measures.

Why candidates lose points. Fixed Income has more names for similar things than any other topic: spot, par and forward rates; Macaulay, modified, effective and money duration; convexity and effective convexity. The calculations are not long, but each one has a version that is almost right. Using Macaulay duration where modified is needed, or forgetting the one-half in the convexity term, gives you an answer that is one of the options.

Two-minute check. A bond has a modified duration of 7.2 and a convexity of 64. Yields rise by 100 basis points. Estimate the percentage price change.

%ΔP ≈ −7.2 × 0.01 + ½ × 64 × (0.01)² = −7.20% + 0.32% = −6.88%.

If you got −7.20%, you dropped convexity. If you got −6.56%, you forgot the one-half. Both appear as options in real exam-style questions.

What to do now. Make one page with the duration and convexity formulas, the price-change approximation, and the relationship between spot, par and forward rates. Then do timed sets of ten questions and check your time, not just your score. If a duration question takes you more than two minutes, that is the thing to practise.

3. Derivatives: low weight, high cost

Weight: 5–8%.

Chapters that cause the most trouble: Arbitrage, Replication and the Cost of Carry in Pricing Derivatives, Pricing and Valuation of Forward Contracts, Option Replication Using Put-Call Parity, and Valuing a Derivative Using a One-Period Binomial Model.

Why candidates lose points. Many candidates skip derivatives because of the low weight, then lose more than the weight on exam day: they meet a pricing question, do not recognise it, and spend five minutes on it. Level I derivatives rest on one idea, no-arbitrage pricing, and almost every calculation is that idea applied once.

Two-minute check. A stock that pays no dividends trades at 50. The annual risk-free rate is 4%. What is the no-arbitrage price of a six-month forward?

F = 50 × (1.04)^0.5 = 50.99.

The tempting wrong answer is 50 × 1.02 = 51.00, which treats the rate as simple interest. The difference is small, which is exactly why it works as a trap.

What to do now. Learn put-call parity until you can write it from memory and rearrange it for any one of its parts. Then do the one-period binomial model by hand twice. Together these two cover most of what the topic can ask, and they take a weekend, not a month.

4. Ethics: the heaviest topic, and the one that decides close results

Weight: 15–20%, the largest of all.

Chapters: Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, Guidance for Standards I–VII, Ethics Application, and Introduction to the Global Investment Performance Standards.

Why candidates lose points. Ethics questions rarely test whether you know a rule. They test whether you can tell which rule a situation falls under, and whether the action described actually breaks it. Two of the three options are usually reasonable-sounding behaviour. Candidates who learn the Standards as a list do worse than those who learn them as cases.

Two-minute check. An analyst overhears, in a lift, that a company is about to announce a large write-down. The information has not been made public. The analyst does not trade, but tells a colleague who manages client accounts. Which Standard is most at issue?

Material nonpublic information, Standard II(A). Passing it on so that others can act on it is a violation even if the analyst never trades. If you thought of loyalty to clients or fair dealing first, re-read the guidance for II(A) with cases, not definitions.

What to do now. Do ethics questions every day until the exam, 15 to 20 at a time, rather than one big block at the end. Ethics improves with repetition more than any other topic, and it is the topic where a few extra correct answers move you the furthest.

5. Quantitative Methods: hypothesis testing and regression

Weight: 6–9%.

Chapters that cause the most trouble: Hypothesis Testing, Parametric and Non-Parametric Tests of Independence, and Simple Linear Regression.

Why candidates lose points. The calculations are short. The mistakes are in the setup: one-tailed or two-tailed, which critical value, what "reject the null" actually means, and the difference between a Type I and a Type II error.

Two-minute check. A fund's average monthly excess return over 36 months is 1.2%, with a standard deviation of 4%. At the 5% significance level, two-tailed, is the mean excess return different from zero?

t = 0.012 ÷ (0.04 ÷ √36) = 0.012 ÷ 0.00667 = 1.80. The critical t-value with 35 degrees of freedom is about 2.03. Since 1.80 is below 2.03, you fail to reject the null hypothesis: the evidence is not strong enough to say the fund earns a positive excess return. Candidates who use 1.96, or who say "accept the null", lose this point.

What to do now. Write the decision rule in one line and use it every time: reject the null if the test statistic is further from zero than the critical value. Then do 20 regression interpretation questions: what the slope means, what R² tells you, and what the standard error of the estimate measures.

6. Economics: exchange rate calculations

Weight: 6–9%.

Chapters that cause the most trouble: Exchange Rate Calculations, and Capital Flows and the FX Market.

Why candidates lose points. The maths is simple. The notation is what catches people. The curriculum quotes exchange rates as price currency per one unit of base currency, so USD/EUR = 1.0850 means 1.0850 US dollars per euro. If you read the quote the other way round, you multiply when you should divide, and your wrong answer is one of the options.

Two-minute check. USD/EUR = 1.0850 and JPY/USD = 150.00. What is JPY/EUR?

JPY/EUR = JPY/USD × USD/EUR = 150.00 × 1.0850 = 162.75 yen per euro. A quick check: the US dollars cancel out, leaving yen per euro, which is what you want.

What to do now. Before every FX question, write the quote in words: "1.0850 dollars per 1 euro". It takes three seconds and removes most of the errors. Then practise forward rates with the interest rate parity formula until you can do one in under two minutes.

Your last five weeks

If your exam is in mid-November, here is a realistic plan.

• Week 1: sit one full mock exam under real timing. Do not study first. The point is to find out where you stand.
• Week 2: go through the mock by topic. Pick the two topics from this list where you lost the most points, weighted by their exam weight, and spend most of the week on them.
• Week 3: a second mock. Compare topic scores with the first one. Fix the next weakest topic.
• Week 4: mixed timed question sets every day, plus 15 to 20 ethics questions daily. Re-learn your formula sheet.
• Final days: light review of your own mistakes and formulas. No new material. Sleep.

How JephAi fits into this

JephAi is built for exactly this stage. You get:

• exam-style questions with an explanation for every option, including why each wrong answer is tempting;
• full study chapters for every Level I reading, each with its own formula sheet;
• timed mock exams that show your score by topic, weighted by exam weight;
• Jeph, an AI tutor you can ask about the chapter or question in front of you (Advanced plan).

Try JephAi free for 7 days, no card needed. Start your free trial or compare plans.

Sources: CFA Institute, Level I results for February 2026, May 2026 and August 2026. Topic weights are CFA Institute's published 2026 Level I ranges.