The 2027 curriculum, what changed.

The short version

• Same structure, same weights: ten topics, 180 questions, and every topic keeps its 2026 weight.
• Rebuilt: Quantitative Methods (11 modules) and Equities (8 modules become 12).
• Reorganised: Ethics splits the guidance into one module per Standard, and GIPS is removed.
• Renamed: Corporate Issuers becomes Corporate Finance, Equity Investments becomes Equities, and Portfolio Management becomes Portfolio Construction.
• Unchanged: Economics, Financial Statement Analysis, Fixed Income, Derivatives, Alternative Investments, Corporate Finance and Portfolio Construction keep their learning outcomes.

Quantitative Methods

The 2027 reading is organised around what an analyst does with returns and data, rather than around statistics chapters. Most of the tools are still there, but grouped differently, and a few are new.

• New modules: Types of Financial Returns (price return, distributions, currency effects, long-run returns by asset class) and Benchmarking Returns (money- and time-weighted returns, plus index construction, which moves here from Equities).
• New content: historical simulation and historical VaR, the moments of key distributions, conditional variances and covariances, estimating CAPM beta by regression, p-hacking, and an expanded introduction to financial data science (large language models, reinforcement learning).
• Moved in: the minimum-variance portfolio, efficient frontier, capital allocation line and capital market line now also appear in Quantitative Methods.
• Gone: Roy's safety-first criterion, the harmonic mean and jackknife resampling.

Equities

The biggest change. The 2027 Equities topic follows an equity analyst's workflow, from the instrument to the research report, in twelve modules.

• New: the shareholder voting process and proxy advisors, IPO routes (SPACs, direct listings), liquidity measures such as float and average daily volume, FCFF and residual income models, choosing a peer group, justified multiples, financial statement forecast models, sell-side and buy-side research reports, and the CAPM, beta estimation and multi-factor models for the cost of equity.
• Gone: market efficiency (the three forms and market anomalies), margin and leverage calculations, order types and trading instructions, and the taxonomy of financial intermediaries.
• Changed detail: industry concentration now uses an HHI above 1,800 as highly concentrated.

Ethics

The Code and Standards themselves are unchanged. The guidance that was one long reading in 2026 becomes seven modules, one per Standard (I to VII), which makes each Standard its own study unit. The Introduction to GIPS is removed from Level I; fair performance presentation is still tested under Standard III(D).

How to adjust your preparation

1. Check your exam date. A 2026 exam follows the 2026 curriculum; a 2027 exam the 2027 curriculum.
2. Keep what still counts. Seven topics barely change, so time already spent on them is not lost.
3. Re-learn Quant and Equities from the 2027 modules. Use your 2026 knowledge as a base, but study the new modules in full.
4. Drop what left. Skip GIPS, market efficiency, margin calculations and safety-first.

At CheapMocks, the Academy, the question bank and the mocks follow your curriculum: set your exam date, or pick 2026 or 2027 at the top of the Academy. Lessons you finished carry over when a lesson exists in both years.

Frequently asked questions

Based on our reading of the 2027 Level I curriculum. CFA® is a registered trademark owned by CFA Institute. Start free.