Your Experiance in Finance, or anything if you want to share

[InTurn123]

This is the message I sent pennysaver:

Hi, My name is Jonathan and I'll be going into my junior year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I'm majoring in finance. I was just wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what you do and how you got to the point where you are now. Have you always wanted to do what you currently do? What does it take to get to the level you're at now?

I know these are a lot of questions so if you could give me any feedback I would greatly appreciate it. I need to figure out which area of finance I'm most interested in, though I'm pretty sure it's not investment banking.

Thank you for taking any time that you did to actually read this message.
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pennysaver:

Do you have any idea what you want to do? Finance is a big field. For instance I love the finance part of my job, but I think I'd hate being an accountant. If you like managing assets and people, you might want to look into being a Certified Financial Planner. That's hold a bit of a lure for me that I might investigate.

Me (if you're reading pennysaver, i was going to send you this but decided to post it here):

Right now I don't know enough to have a better idea but the two things that sound interesting to me right now are asset management and option trading.
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If anyone has advice that would be appreciated.

Student and intern, Jonathan

 

[riaz]

Jonathan, other things being equal and the if the choice is narrowed to options or asset management, I would recommend the latter purely on health grounds. I have seen a number of derivatives traders burn out very early from the high tension of the job. You need to explore that aspect of it too.

Asset management, while still intensive, is not as high pressure.

Regardless of what you choose, remember this is a long term affair you will be starting, so whatever you do, it should be for fun AND profit. If one of them is missing, you're in the wrong place.

Kind regards and good luck