What is an investment analyst?

As an investment analyst, you research companies, stocks, bonds, and securities to produce buy-or-sell recommendations. Your specific responsibilities depend on your employer. If you are a sell-side investment analyst, you typically work for brokerage firms and provide information to financial advisors who use your research to make investment recommendations to clients. You could also work at an investment banking firm, providing analysis and pricing for the bank’s own products. If you are a buy-side analyst, you typically work for wealth management firms, hedge funds, and pension funds. In those settings, your job duties are to research the market and to produce an investment strategy or portfolio for use by the company’s internal investment managers.