Hi all, have just finished reading all the books and am planning to start recapping the my notes and then do the questions. The topic area weightings on the CFA website is rather vague - can someone please help clarify what they actually mean i.e. I’d like to know which of the 6 books carries the most weghting and which book carries the least weighting.
the topic weights are vague because the topic distinction is vague as well.
l3 is mostly about managing a pf and then learning what assets/tools you can utilize.
your clients will be indiv/inst. you’ll need to consider how irrational they are and the economy to consider how to split your basket among asset classes (more focus on fi>equity>alternative). you’ll do this with the standards in mind, and should also know how to actively manage the pf.
so your question is close to asking what’s more important when driving a car…
i dont think that is the best example - obviously the brakes, steering, gas pedal and looking in front of you for traffic and lights are more important, than say your seat warmers… 
In my opinion, after my review of the cirriculum, I think the importance of topics would be the below
GIPS 5%, Ethics 10%, Taxes 5-10%, Derivatives 10 - 15%, Risk Management 5%, Alt Inv 5%, F.I 5 - 10%, Portfolio Management 5 - 10%, CME probably 5%, Private Wealth 10%, Institutional 5%, Individual Portf Mgment not included up top (HC, FC, Asset Allocation, concentrated positions etc) 10 - 15%, Portfolio execution 5% Performance attribution 5%, Biases 5%
So it is kind of a crap shoot but there are areas you can focus on- may be forgetting something too - this is just off the top of my head (and again, my opinion)
^ +1
lol. @kschloss, your topic weight distr. is pretty much 1/n div.
but yea i’m sure OP gets the gist of it.