Is it possible to be terrible at accounting yet be good at finance?
I understand that not all areas of finance deal with the detailed aspects accounting per-se, and most jobs in the finance industry only require the basic understanding of the three financial statements and how they interact with each other. But I am talking more along the lines of corporate finance, FP&A, Financial Analyst positions (I know this is a very broad title, but something that deals more with revenue growth and forecasting than simply being a glorified accountant, which I know many Financial Analyst jobs are). AKA the easier to break into finance fields, rather than IB, Sales and Trading, Equity Research, etc. which have much less accounting, but also require advanced/ivy league degrees.
So for the finance jobs mentioned above that accountants are able to make the transition more easily into, do you think it is possible for somebody who has near zero interest or ability in accounting (public accounting in particular is making me want to stick forks in my eyeballs), is finance going to be very similar, in terms of talent, abilities, and general skill?
I personally love all things finance, I read books about investing all the time, I watch videos lessons and attend seminars to learn how to build financial models, I'm constantly interested and always keeping up with the markets, why did the S&P500 go up or down today, what are the underlying factors that are influencing the move of this index or this stock, etc, I opened an account on investopedia to simulate trading and eventually opened a real account on Ally, and practiced stock picking and trading using real dollars (small amounts, researching, reading new positive news and seeing a stock skyrocket is so exciting and fascinating to me). I love getting better/faster and using excel, I have a small cheat sheet where I list all the most useful keyboard shortcuts, I love being an absolute wizard with excel, learning new useful shortcuts, formulas, and functions. I could read economics, financial industry news, up and coming companies, technical and fundamental analysis all day for fun, but I don't know if my "interest" will also help me perform at the professional level.
I just chose accounting because I didn't go to a target school and I didn't think I could break into a good finance job right out of school, but now that I have working in public accounting, I realize I don't like it and I'm not good at it, and I want to make the transition into finance if possible. Do you guys think that the "natural skillset" of each field is so closely related, that if you are not good and dislike one of them, that you will likely not be good at the other? (EX: if you didn't like football because because its rough and you got tackled, you probably will also not like being an MMA fighter, or if you didn't like math class because numbers are boring, then you will probably also not like electrical engineering as a major)
Cliffs:
-OP works in public accounting
-OP hates public accounting/audit
-OP is not talented at audit/accounting, looking at detailed transactions bores the hell out of me, processes at work are tedious and uninspiring
-OP is very interested in finance not just by the salary, but the subject itself and the content of the work
-OP is worried that accounting as a skill/talent is very similar to finance as a skill/talent, and if you suck at one you will likely suck at the other
-OP seeks WSOs input
yes it is, i hate accounting and am not the greatest at it, but love finance and consider myself pretty good at it. They are two very different animals on their own, however, you do need accounting in just about every area, including finance, because accounting is the language of finance.
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