Does working in finance firms improve a person's finance knowledge?
It depends what you mean by financial knowledge.  Often you will work in a group focused on some aspect of the company's business.  As an example, I work for a company and my group works on econometric models.  Although I have a degree in finance, I don't encounter or talk about corporate or personal finance.  I do talk about investing with a friend, but in general, our group is focused on one aspect of finance and economics for the company.   From another direction, often financial companies will offer financial literacy training through HR and benefits programs where you can improve your knowledge of finance outside of your groups focus.   In the end, you will learn the most by persuing new knowledge through reading on current financial literature.  I hope this helps. Edit:  If you add some specifics to what you would like to learn about I may be able to point you in the right direction. Depends on what work you're doing. If you aren't doing a job which involves working with and understanding the data, probably not.
Thats exactly what I am looking to do - a career change. My problem is I dont have any relevant experience in finance (and mot much knowledge either). So I planned to do the CFA thinking that I will get some relevant knowledge in order to apply for jobs in the field. As things stand now I dont if I will fare well in an interview if I get a call.   You got a job explaining your investments, thats impressive. I wonder if you could tell me, what other things will the interviewers grind you on if an IT guy looks to get into finance without any relevant experience? I asked about this in the last thread, but got no answers because it was 4-5 days old at the time.   I'm a finance student, and currently an intern at a big Financial Services firm. The internship is in compliance, though, and that's not exactly where I want to end up later. I don't know exactly what I want to do, but I assume there are some skills that are widely applicable in the entire industry that aren't taught enough, and I want to learn something over the summer (through Coursera/books/videos/whatever). The problem is, I don't know what. Does anyone here have any suggestions? I was thinking something along the lines of programming or some more advanced excel stuff that isn't taught in school, but I don't really have any place to start. Any advise would be appreciated. Work-life balance is kind of a bad joke if you actually are in a career with high growth potentials imo. It isn't even confined to just finance. Anyone I know with high growth potential jobs, especially during junior years at the firm, will require quite a bit of OT. I'd say most 9-5 jobs do not provide rapid growth in salary / positions. To start with the easier one: I went to a large state school that's got a well-ranked business school for undergrad and majored in finance. No masters. The ranking isn't necessary, but the degree (or one similar) probably is just to get into the finance field. You could do treasury work with an accounting degree, and you really could do it with any degree, but a lot of companies might not want to take a chance on you if you don't have at least some applicable knowledge.  Typical day: I usually get in around 7:30 and crank out a couple of daily tasks: I gather bank statements and do some minor data entry to come up with a prediction of what our cash is going to look like for the day. Depending on the day, I get into our Bloomberg terminal and send out money for overnight investment or sell commercial paper to raise money on a short term basis. I do some minor housekeeping/accounting work that's mostly system generated, we just check it. I spend the middle portion of my day approving payments, meeting with business groups to help develop our forecast better for the next 30-60-90 days, maybe meet with bankers if they're in the office, maybe do ad hoc work, maybe do debt analysis, etc. Basically this is my free work time. End of the day I gather more bank reports, send out results for the day to leadership and an updated projection of cash flow for the rest of the month.   If things get really exciting, I might get to take part in an acquisition, do stuff with bonds, etc. It rarely gets that exciting though. "In finance  What kind of amorphous bullshit is that? There are literally hundreds of different things that can varyingly be termed ""in finance"". If you want the traditional big bank job working as a spreadsheet monkey, very fucking difficult right now. Masters in finance doubling down on a BS: if it's from Princeton, great, if it's from Blue Mountain State, whatever. A CFA is getting common but it might help - it probably won't hurt at least.   If you mean ""as a big shot trader for a hedge fund"" the answer is precisely impossible with only that on your resume. If you mean entry corporate finance, it's certainly possible (although you should not listen to anything I say in this regard as I've successfully avoided learning much about the subject thus far and have no intention of changing that, thus am as roughly as reliable on that as a wet paper towel)." "I actually interviewed to work at the SEC as an ""industry transplant.""  I was surprised to learn the limits of the SEC's power - namely, they cannot compel anybody to show them any documents - even ones financial firms are required to hold.  When firms do ""cooperate,"" they tend to make it as difficult as possible for investigators.  All the SEC can do in the end is sue the firm, and that's a long drawn out process (I understand now why there are so many settlements).  What I learned, however, is that the SEC needs more people like myself who have worked in the business.  Most people who interviewed me were attorneys and (sometimes) accountants.  Their experience in the financial industry was limited to working at legal firms who did financial advisory work.  Many simply don't even know what to look for.  I'm still waiting to hear back, but there are a lot of lawyers who are sick of working industry jobs and would love the pay and work environment of the SEC - so it's tough to get a position there." I am newly applying to finance related jobs, my question is, could someone ELI5 what exactly different sectors within finance are? Like capital markets, derivatives, equity research, wealth management. All of this seems overwhelming coming at it at once. "There are some tedious parts for sure - often times people hear ""Finance"" and think invoices, accounting, etc., but I would say it's less that 10% of my role. I do handle the budgeting process - what I have enjoyed about that is that it offers a window into the strategy of the firm, and whether they are making investments in areas that align with their strategic objectives.   This is another good question to ask as you get to know different teams - does the FP&amp;A/Finance group have a seat at the table in strategic discussions. In any corp fin function, I think you will find that the more finance is valued as a partner to the business, the more interesting your work will be." I agree. The CFA is nice for students who have the time to take the exam, because it could be a year or two before the start working, so it is a reasonable resume padder (especially if your major is engineer, science, or math and you want to do finance).  If you are trying to do a career change, it is important to know the material, because if you don't, then you can't do the job even if someone gives it to you. But passing the test isn't as important as actually applying to the jobs and networking.  I switched from engineering to finance (buyside equity analyst). Originally I planned to take the CFA exams to help me with my transition. But their new rule required a valid passport, and it takes a while to get one, so I missed the deadline for last December's exam. That turned out to be a good thing because I just started networking, cold calling/emailing, applying to jobs, etc and I got my current job. If I had actually decided to take the CFA, I would have wasted all my time preparing for the exam instead of trying to get the job. Potential employers know if you are good or not after talking to you for 15 minutes. It has nothing to do with being able to memorize a set of formulas, some the last name of some economists and their theories, some oscure accounting differences between GAAP and IFRS, etc. For me it was the fact that I invest my own money and that I am able to explain my own investments very intelligently (aka it needs to be a lot better than what you see on /r/investing).  If you know nothing about finance, studying the CFA material and then taking the exam is a good thing. You are going to be studying the material anyways if you are serious about a career change, so might as well take the exam afterwards and get a resume padder. I did end up taking the level 1 this month because my new employer paid for it. I don't think it adds any value once your foot is already in the door, especially since it takes 5 years of experience to get the charter (after that amount of time, it's all about job experience). At this point, completely useless. In the beginning it was useful to get my foot in the door.   I still do the odd excel macro to automate some kind of analysis or valuation I do, but its like .. twice a year.  So not very useful at this point.  But I'd say that university taught me how to *learn* so its not as much about what i learned, but the process of learning how to learn effectively. Without that I wouldnt have been able to do the CFA, or learn anything else that I had to in order to get here. The best learning technique for me is not to dredge through books in order to gain a better understanding of finance.  This is tedious and causes me to lose interest.  I'm not sure of your tolerance for this type of learning.  I tend to learn in small pieces.  Something piques my interest and I go off reading about that particular topic. May I suggest some alternate methods: http://i.imgur.com/qvayKiB.jpg  I bet many mathematicians would tell you that learning math makes you a better investor. And programmers would tell you that learning how to code makes you a better investor. And similarly for [biologists](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/hedge-fund-quant-posting-21-return-says-biology-is-secret-sauce) and sociologists and psychologists and [linguists](https://tepper.cmu.edu/-/media/files/tepper/extranet/academic%20programs/phd/dissertations/gao%20dissertation%20pdf.pdf) (PDF). Admittedly I have my own preconceived notions about [literary criticism](http://xkcd.com/451/), but I'd be tempted to believe the argument of an expert in any of those fields over a literary critic's. Become genuinely passionate about the subject and the knowledge/experience will guide you.   If you're really desperate to get a position in finance ASAP, i would recommend a financials sales path. Sales is usually the most avoided path, as well as one of the most important skill sets to have. Most people don't even know that the top investment banking positions are sales, lol..... You really just need to learn about finance, trading and the markets. I know a chemical engineer that did an IB internship. He joined our universities Investments club and just learned everything from there. He never took a single business class There are several paths of study you could undertake. If you want to learn the fundamentals of the stock market and become a financial analyst, then finance, economics, and accounting (yes, accounting) are all good to study either on your own or in an institution. Furthermore, if you want to study a specific industry, it can't hurt to know a fair amount of the science behind that particular industry. For example, if you want to understand the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries, knowledge of clinical trials, the FDA's approval process (in the US, at least), off-label uses for drugs, genetic engineering, etc. are all good to know. You don't have to become an expert, but having a firm grasp on the science is extremely useful when evaluating a company's prospects. If you're interested in becoming an algorithmic trader or a quant, then physics, certain fields of engineering, signals processing, applied math, computer science, or econometrics will get you much farther than a standard finance or accounting degree. Most people can learn the basics of finance; not everyone can learn advanced mathematics. A lot of the above applies to learning about the forex market as well. Economics is certainly helpful, especially central bank policy, but since the forex market is so massive and liquid, many mathematical tools are necessary because algorithms play a key role as well. Per littleadv's suggestion, an MBA with a concentration in finance may be an option for someone who already has a degree. Also, an MSF (Master of Science in Finance) or a degree in financial engineering (called an MFE, or ORFE, for Operations Research and Financial Engineering) are other, potentially better options for someone pursuing a more technical career. A high-octane trading firm may not care that you've taken marketing and management classes; they want to hire someone who can understand complex algorithms and design and implement new ones quickly.  Some MSF programs are pre-experience programs, which means that in exchange for taking more time to complete, they don't expect you to have significant work experience in the financial industry. An MBA might require such experience, however.