SIE Exam Content Outline 2026: Products Are 44% of the Paper
Products and their risks are 33 of the 75 scored questions. The weightings have not moved, but the paper has: 5 unscored items instead of 10 since October 2025, and a $100 fee since January.
- 80 (75 scored)Questions
- 1h 45mTime
- 4Sections
- YesWeights published
- 70 on 0-100Pass mark
- $100Fee
Table of Contents
The whole paper in one bar
The SIE content outline dated October 2025 is the exam guide FINRA publishes for Securities Industry Essentials (SIE), restated so you can see the shape of the paper before you read a word of the detail. The bar below is the entire syllabus: 4 sections, in the order the certifying body lists them.
- §1 Knowledge of Capital Markets — 16%
- §2 Understanding Products and Their Risks — 44%
- §3 Understanding Trading, Customer Accounts and Prohibited Activities — 31%
- §4 Overview of the Regulatory Framework — 9%
Those percentages are FINRA’s own, not an estimate. That matters more than it sounds: most pages ranking for this query quote weightings the certifying body never published.
The syllabus, section by section
Each block below is one section of the official outline. The bullets are the sub-objectives FINRA publishes underneath it — the actual scope statement, not a summary of it.
Knowledge of Capital Markets
- Regulators and SROs: SEC, FINRA, MSRB, Cboe, state regulators and NASAA, the Federal Reserve, Treasury/IRS, SIPC, FDIC
- Market participants: retail, accredited and institutional investors, introducing and clearing broker-dealers, advisers, municipal advisors, transfer agents, custodians, DTCC and OCC
- Market structure: primary and secondary markets, exchanges and OTC, the third and fourth markets
- The Fed: monetary vs fiscal policy, open market operations, the discount rate and the federal funds rate
- Business economics: financial statements, the business cycle, leading, lagging and coincident indicators, cyclical vs defensive vs growth, Keynesian and monetarist theory
- International factors: balance of payments, GDP and GNP, exchange rates
- Offerings: public vs private, IPO vs follow-on, best efforts vs firm commitment, syndicates, shelf registration
- Offering documents and exemptions: prospectus, official statement, Regulation D, Rules 144, 144A and 147, blue-sky filing
Understanding Products and Their Risks
- Equities: common and preferred stock, rights, warrants, ADRs, voting rights, liquidation order, Rule 144 restrictions
- Debt: Treasuries, agency and mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds, GO and revenue municipal bonds, money market instruments
- Bond mechanics: par, coupon, yield, ratings, call and convertible features, the price and interest-rate relationship
- Options: puts and calls, equity vs index, strike, premium, in and out of the money, covered vs uncovered, American vs European, the ODD and the OCC
- Packaged products: open-end and closed-end funds, UITs, variable annuities, share classes, NAV, breakpoints, rights of accumulation, letters of intent, surrender charges
- Municipal fund securities: 529 prepaid tuition and savings plans, LGIPs, ABLE accounts
- DPPs, REITs (private, non-listed, listed), hedge funds, and ETPs: ETFs vs ETNs, active vs passive
- Investment risk: capital, credit, currency, inflation, interest-rate and reinvestment, liquidity, systematic vs non-systematic, political, prepayment; diversification, rebalancing and hedging
Understanding Trading, Customer Accounts and Prohibited Activities
- Orders and strategies: market, limit, stop, GTC, discretionary vs non-discretionary, principal vs agency, long vs short, bullish vs bearish
- Returns: dividend types and the record, ex-dividend and payable dates, yield, YTM, YTC, total return, basis points, cost basis
- Settlement (T, T+1) and corporate actions: splits and reverse splits, buybacks, tender and exchange offers, rights offerings, proxies
- Accounts: cash, margin, options, fee-based vs commission; individual, joint, trust, UTMA custodial, partnership, IRA and qualified-plan registrations, RMDs
- Anti-money laundering: placement, layering and structuring, the AML programme, SARs, CTRs, FinCEN, OFAC and the SDN list
- Books, records and privacy: retention, confirmations and statements, holding customer mail, business continuity plans, Regulation S-P
- Communications with the public, telemarketing and do-not-call; know-your-customer, best interest and suitability obligations
- Prohibited activities: manipulation (pump and dump, front running, marking the close, freeriding), insider trading, IPO purchase restrictions, borrowing from or sharing in customer accounts, exploitation of seniors, signatures of convenience
Overview of the Regulatory Framework
- Registered vs non-registered persons and what each may do
- Background checks, fingerprinting, statutory disqualification and ineligibility for association
- State (blue-sky) registration and continuing education: the Regulatory Element and the Firm Element
- Forms U4 and U5: purpose, when to update, the consequences of misleading or missing information
- Customer complaints and potential red flags
- Outside business activities and private securities transactions
- Political contributions, gift and non-cash compensation limits, business entertainment; felonies, liens and bankruptcy as reportable events
FINRA's outline fixes the format: 75 scored multiple-choice items with four options each, plus 5 unscored pretest items you cannot identify, so 80 items in 1 hour 45 minutes - about 79 seconds each. There is no penalty for guessing and no reference material is allowed. Scores are equated to a common scale, so the 70 pass mark is not 70% of raw answers. The SIE is open to anyone aged 18 or over with no sponsoring firm, but it qualifies you for nothing on its own: registration also needs a representative exam (Series 6, 7, 22, 57, 79, 82, 86/87 or 99) and a member firm. The result stays valid for four years.
What the weightings really mean
A percentage in an exam guide is a promise about how many questions get drawn from a section, not about how hard those questions are. On a paper of roughly 75 items, Understanding Products and Their Risks at 44% is worth about 33 questions and Overview of the Regulatory Framework at 9% is worth about 7. Missing the whole of the smallest section still leaves you a pass on paper; missing the largest one does not.
The trap is treating that arithmetic as permission to skip. Weightings are the floor of what a section costs you, because the low-weight sections on almost every blueprint are the ones that supply context for questions filed under a different heading. You lose those marks in the heavy section and never find out why.
Reading the verbs in the objectives
The verb at the front of each sub-objective is the part candidates skim and examiners take literally. It sets the depth you are tested at, and it is the difference between recognising a term and being asked to choose between two answers that both look right.
| Verb | What a question at that depth looks like |
|---|---|
| Know / Define | Most of the paper. FINRA describes the SIE as a test of basic knowledge, and the outline reads as a list of terms: which regulator does what, what a warrant or an ADR is, what SIPC covers and what the FDIC covers. One correct definition, three near misses. |
| Distinguish / Compare | Pairs the outline sets side by side: GO vs revenue bonds, open-end vs closed-end funds, ETFs vs ETNs, monetary vs fiscal policy, discretionary vs non-discretionary accounts. The wrong answers are usually true of the other half of the pair. |
| Relate / Work out | Which way a bond price moves when rates rise, what a reverse split does to price and cost basis, which date decides who gets the dividend. The SIE outline lists concepts; it does not name the margin, options break-even or accrued-interest calculations that the Series 7 outline does. |
| Recognise / Spot the violation | Section 3's prohibited activities and Section 4's reportable events: name the manipulation (front running, marking the close, pump and dump), the insider-trading problem, or the event that has to go on a Form U4. |
FINRA says the SIE tests both rule-based knowledge, such as SAR reporting and Form U4 filing, and general industry knowledge that comes from no single rule, such as bond price versus yield or a common stockholder's rights. It is written for someone not yet inside a firm: questions ask what a thing is or which rule applies, not which product you would pick for a particular customer.
Study it in this order, not the syllabus order
Exam guides are written to describe what a candidate must know, not to teach it. The published order is almost never the order that builds knowledge fastest. This is the sequence that front-loads the material everything else depends on.
| Order | Why here |
|---|---|
| 1. Understanding Products and Their Risks | 44%, 33 items - the largest section and the vocabulary for the other three. Equities, bonds and munis, funds and variable annuities, options basics, DPPs, REITs, ETPs, then the named risk types. |
| 2. Understanding Trading, Customer Accounts and Prohibited Activities | 31%, 23 items. Orders, returns and settlement apply the products you just learned, and AML, Regulation S-P, best interest and the manipulation list carry most of the rule content on the paper. |
| 3. Knowledge of Capital Markets | 16%, 12 items. Regulators, market participants, the Fed, economic indicators and how offerings come to market. The offering bullets (prospectus, Regulation D, Rule 144) lean on Section 2's products. |
| 4. Overview of the Regulatory Framework | 9%, 7 items, the smallest section: registration, continuing education, Forms U4 and U5, reportable events, gift and political-contribution limits. Pure memorisation - do it last so it is fresh. |
Sections 2 and 3 are 56 of the 75 scored items (75%). Do not read Section 4's 9% as the share of regulation on the paper: AML, privacy, best interest, insider trading and the prohibited-activities list all sit in Section 3.
What changed, and how to spot the next change
The content has not changed; the paper and the price have. FINRA's October 2025 outline keeps the four sections, percentages and item counts of the 2024 printing word for word, but cuts the unscored pretest items from 10 to 5 (from 27 October 2025), so you now see 80 items instead of 85 in the same 1 hour 45 minutes. On 1 January 2026 the fee rose from $80 to $100 under FINRA's published fee schedule, which holds it at $100 through 2029. The retake wait is changing too. On 29 June 2026 FINRA filed to cut it from 30, 30 and 180 days to 15, 15 and 60, but said the shorter waits are not yet in effect and that it will announce the start date in a Regulatory Notice. Until that notice appears, plan on 30 days. A pass stays valid for four years.
Two habits keep you from studying a retired outline. First, open the official exam guide and look for its revision date before you buy anything — courses and question banks lag a syllabus change by months, and the cheapest ones never catch up. Second, re-check it the week you book. A revision announced after you started studying is still a revision you sit.
Turn the syllabus into questions
Reading an outline tells you the shape of the paper. Answering questions tells you which sections you would actually lose marks on. Start free, then $5.99 unlocks the full SIE bank.
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What are the SIE sections and their weightings?
Four: Knowledge of Capital Markets 16% (12 items), Understanding Products and Their Risks 44% (33 items), Understanding Trading, Customer Accounts and Prohibited Activities 31% (23 items), and Overview of the Regulatory Framework 9% (7 items). FINRA publishes both the percentages and the item counts, and they apply to the 75 scored questions. The October 2025 outline left every one of them unchanged.
What is the passing score for the SIE?
70 on a scale of 0 to 100. FINRA equates every score to a common scale to even out small differences in difficulty between exam forms, so 70 is not the same as 70% of answers correct. Only the 75 scored items count; the 5 pretest items do not. A pass comes with no further detail. A fail result shows your overall score and your performance on each section of the outline.
Do I need a sponsoring firm to take the SIE?
No. Anyone aged 18 or older can take the SIE without being associated with a firm, which is not true of the representative exams. The catch is that the SIE alone does not let you register or do securities business. You also need a co-requisite exam such as the Series 6, 7, 22, 57, 79, 82, 86/87 or 99, plus a member firm. The order you pass them in does not matter, and the SIE result is valid for four years.
How much does the SIE cost in total?
$100 per attempt since 1 January 2026, up from $80, and FINRA's fee schedule keeps it at $100 through 2029. A retake costs the same again. Your co-requisite exam is a separate fee - the Series 7, for example, is $395. Retake waits are currently 30 days after the first and second failures and 180 days after the third; FINRA has filed to cut them to 15 and 60 days but has not yet set a start date.
Sources
Every section title, sub-objective and number on this page comes from the certifying body:
- https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/SIE_Content_Outline.pdf
- https://www.finra.org/registration-exams-ce/qualification-exams/securities-industry-essentials-exam
- https://www.finra.org/registration-exams-ce/qualification-exams/sie-and-exam-restructuring-faq
- https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/rule-filings/sr-finra-2024-019/fee-adjustment-schedule
- https://www.finra.org/compliance-tools/weekly-archive/07012026
- https://www.finra.org/registration-exams-ce/qualification-exam/testcenter
Checked October 9, 2026. Exam guides are revised without notice — confirm against FINRA before you build a study plan around this page.