i am an accounting student in obafemi awolowo university aspiring to be a financial analyst.I want to know what financial analysis actually involves and what i need to become a succesful one.comments and advices from financial analysts will be appreciated.THANKS

[quote author=paulcr7]i am an accounting student in obafemi awolowo university aspiring to be a financial analyst.I want to know what financial analysis actually involves and what i need to become a succesful one.comments and advices from financial analysts will be appreciated.THANKS[/q


Speak to a lecturer at your school's finance department, not banking o. Anyway, financial analysis starts where accounting and book-keeping stop. To put it straight, financial analysts are past, current and forward thinking people, while accountants are essentially historians, although some do one or two projections here and there, projections are not critical to the work of accountants.

Financial analysis can be broad. What is interesting, at least in my view, is the investment side of financial analysis..That is, doing financial analysis with primary aim of making investment decisions. That is the most glamorous part of finance..

There are some finance tasks which can be easily performed by accountants. Both fields intersect non-trivially at some points, although the set of intersecting points is countably finite and converges compactly to singleton as you specialize in each field.

As a financial analyst interested in the investment side of finance, you can work for investment banks, M&A/LBO specialized groups, private equity (ask nairalander Deenee for details), hedge funds and investment management companies such as Bridgewater Associates (world's largest HF), Berkshire Hathaway and co. If what interests you is becoming a financial analyst for hedge funds, mutual funds, investment management/asset and/or liability management, securities research and quantitative modeling firms, then you may speak to me or other nairalanders who are essentially buyside finance people.

Let me leave you to demonstrate the area of finance that interests you very seriously. Besides corporate finance and a handful of others, finance can be brutally competitive and the work hours can be killing; you must have a genuine passion for it to succeed.Whether the passion is mostly motivated by pounds and dollars and naira is another story for another day.

Xeros---BUY!

T22

^^^^ Always making insightful posts, btw, you hardly come here these days Sir.

@Op,please ensure that you come out as one of the best in that department, that'll boost your chance, also I believe you like crunching numbers, it is impotant alongside report writing.

nitrogen:
^^^^ Always making insightful posts, btw, you hardly come here these days Sir.

@Op,please ensure that you come out as one of the best in that department, that'll boost your chance, also I believe you like crunching numbers, it is impotant alongside report writing.

[quote author=tanimola22 post=13351913][/quote]


Hello @tanimola,

I am currently an Accountant (3 years experience) but will like to change career path into becoming a Financial Analyst. What will you advise to be done to penetrate the market.?