Young HF Analyst, What Should I Do Next?

After reaching a certain level of maturity and finding myself with the choice of what I should do next with my life, I come to the anonymous WSO community for different perspectives, thoughts, or advice.

I have been very fortunate throughout my life. From humble beginnings, I obtained a part scholarship to a small private non target school in the southwest. It is a very small, good school but unheard of. Unfortunately I was not very serious with my schoolwork and graduated with a double major in business and economics with a very not very impressive 3.1 GPA. I partied a lot and didn't put enough work into school until the last couple of years. Plus I had three part time jobs to pay my bills and tuition through school and managed to graduate debt free.

I got my shit together and managed to get an internship at a small fixed income hedge fund (High yield and some distressed) with 100-200 AUM which soon turned into a full time position as an analyst. I spend most of my time analyzing bond issuers, financial modeling, relative value analysis, and risk management along one of the PMs and head of trading which has been nothing short of a great learning experience. I passed the CFA level II exam and will be sitting for level III next year. I took the GMAT (with only two weeks studying) and obtained a 650. I have solid test taking skills and think getting above 700 would be easily achievable with a couple months worth of studying. I also partook in an iphone app startup on the side which failed, but it was still a good learning experience.

After almost 3 years working at the fund, I find myself soul searching on what I should do next with my life. I live in a smaller city and find myself pondering if I should go try to find a better gig in NY (plus I really want to live in a big financial capital, I have always lived in smaller urban cities). I am, in my opinion, underpaid (65k with little bonus) but my bosses always talk about how the money will eventually come and that I am just a kid. I feel I do some great work here (pitching profitable ideas has been my most recent focus and I have done well so far) but I understand I obviously need the kind of experience that only comes with time but damn, I want to be properly compensated. Believe me I know how lucky I am to have a job but I cannot become complacent with my career. Our returns are not bad but I don’t know how much we can actually grow in AUM. This place feels like a dead end where I cannot grow into a new role besides just pitching more ideas and hoping I get more compensation that goes hand in hand with their performance.

I have thought about some of my options which I outline below, any input would be greatly appreciated:

1. Go to a larger fund- With my relatively small amount of experience I don’t know if it would be hard for me to go to a larger fund without having the appropriate contacts and BB bank sell side experience. Am I wrong in thinking this?
2. Go to a BB sell side firm- I have heard that there little jobs in the sell side that are better than any job in the buy side but I feel that getting a big bank name on my résumé would go a long way on my résumé instead of some small unheard of HF. Plus the networking capabilities and perks of living in a big city like NY are very appealing.
3. Get a MBA, followed by #1 or #2- Should I maybe try and go to a top 5/10 MBA? I wouldn't settle for anything less than a top tier school.

I may be wrong in most of my assumptions but that is why I am asking anonymous opinions from people with experience for any thoughts.

Ideally I would like to travel the world and sustain myself through day trading futures. I have been successful in making consistently making money so far but I realize that it might just be a good string of luck and I can't rely own that kind of income. Gotta be realistic. I want to stay in the business but I am unsure of what I should do next besides finishing up the CFA.

Sorry for the rant and poor writing, I’m a bit stoned.