Transition to Equity Research/ Quant or do the shit I do!!

My firs post here.I promise to come up with better posts as I read and learn more here ;)

Long story short :
The oft posted and much maligned story of an IT guy wanting to break into finance.Total IT experience of 9 years.
Financial services Back office IT experience : 1 year

The details:
I did my BS 9 years ago; joined an IT major as their IT Business Analyst. After working as a Business analyst for 7 years, and hitting a ceiling in terms of pay and growth, I decided to go take the GMAT and exit. Scored a 700+ with 3 weeks of effort; but later had to change plans due to life and job situation..That's when I started as an observer/reader in forums like WOA and analystforum, got interested in Finance, and tried to get into the financial services industry as a business analyst for their back office IT operations.

The Dream:

Being new to Finance, had to learn from scratch, and that learning experience did rekindle the fire to learn.
Refreshed with that; I started looking for non-MBA options to break out of IT and get into the real world of finance.
I have narrowed down 3 paths for me -

- Quant guy : Always loved math; so I was excited learning about what a quant guy does. Issue: How to break in? MFE(at 32, lol), CQF....what else?

- Equity research - Pretty exciting from what I read. Issue: how to break in? CFA?

- Part time MBA/Exec MBA. Does it help transition from back to front office? Or would it be a waste of time and resources?

The suggestions?
Now this is blank - for you guys to fill in; I am sure the solutions would evolve once I read and rephrase my questions and ask better questions to myself; but these are the questions giving me sleepless nights for the past few weeks.

4 Comments
 

Man, to be honest, you're in a pretty tought spot. I would say go for your MBA full time but it seems like that isn't an option for you. Getting the CFA is really hard and you learn a ton from it but being in the position you're in I don't know how much it would actually help you.

If you're 100% serious about making the jump then I would bite the bullet and go for a top tier full time MBA.

Everyone is either going to tell you to network or get the MBA...

 

Unless you get EXTREMELY lucky and somehow manage to break in to the industry, your best bet is to get into a top MBA program (full-time).

Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis - when I was dead broke man I couldn't picture this
 

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