Investment Accountant

As an Investment Accountant, you specialize in transactions that involve investments, such as the purchase or sale of stocks. You evaluate and offer advice about investments, process transactions, and complete paperwork.

Your job is different as an Investment Accountant from that of a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) because instead of filing taxes and evaluating payroll decisions, you frequently check the pulse of the securities markets and understand how to evaluate stock performance. You work with clients who wish to build a portfolio, invest in a hedge fund, or just make a bond purchase. Investment Accountant clients turn to other professionals for advice on performance of specific stocks, but they come to you when they want to know how a purchase or sale will affect their tax situation.

They get an answer quickly, because you’ve been monitoring their file. You’ve processed the trades, recorded every step of the transactions, verified data, and tracked the stock’s performance. With each loss, gain, or exchange, you’ve analyzed the portfolio and updated the ledgers. So, now that your client is asking about selling a million shares of paper bag stock, you can tell them that waiting until the new year would give them a better tax position.

The other tasks that you perform every day include reconciling accounts, balancing ledger sheets, and completing regulatory reports, such as those required by the IRS. You also prepare the client’s schedule D at tax time. You do all this from your desk at a brokerage firm, or if you’re an independent Consultant, from your sofa or den.