Anyone here work in finance, investment, stocks, etc.

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When I'm older I want to be a hedge fund manager. Before doing that, I want to work in the banking and investment sector for a few years.

Does anyone here work in this sector? How do you find it?

Just interested to hear experiences and impressions really

I have worked in Finance and in my undergraduate years, spent a summer on Wall Street in New York City. It is a fast paced and HIGHLY STRESSFUL business. There are only two emotions in the world of Finance...fear and greed. You need to be the type of person who is very organized and have the ability to absorb a great deal of information and react quickly when required.
It is a "cutthroat" business and not suited for everybody.

A college major in Accounting, Finance or Business Administration with sufficient courses in Accounting is a pre-requisite. The London School of Economics is an added plus on your college resume when you apply for jobs. Since you are only 15 years old now, begin reading financial periodicals, the Wall Street Journal, Barrons', etc now.

In addition, read books like, "The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy" by Charles Morris...and others related to business, economics and finance obtained through your local library.

Best of luck to you!

It depends on whether you want to be a value investor or a quant.

I couldn't agree more: finance is nothing but fear and greed. Are you sure you want to work there? I've only dipped my toes into finance (because most clients my company deals with are in the financial sector), but I personally find it extremely distasteful. It's not even intellectually challenging; most arguments are simply guesswork. It may be informed guesswork, or complete shots in the dark, but it's really just guesswork. In the end it becomes more a game of who's a better speaker or sales person, rather than who has more accurate and well-researched evidence.

If you're set, however, most books by this guy George Soros is good - also a hedge fund manager, actually the most successful in the world. Don't buy those available at the local bookstore, those aren't very helpful. Search the libraries for more technical stuff.

However, I have to disagree with certain points Zsazsa made:
1. Stay far, far away from (micro)economics - learn it only so that you'll know how NOT to think. Many logical deductions of that field are based on premises so absurd that they're more a result of algebra than a causal analysis of what happens in reality - that is, most people would say that the alarm clock rings in the morning because you set it to ring in the morning to wake you up. A (caricatured) economist would say that the ringing of the alarm clock is highly correlated with the rising of the sun.

2. Periodicals with a high frequency of publication, e.g. the WSJ, Financial Times, tend to contain a lot of useless "flavour-of-the-moment" news, i.e. if you subsist only on a diet of such publications, you will have a systemic bias toward recent data (unless you require technical analysis, which is the case for intra-day traders). The Economist is a little more useful, despite my misgivings of economics.

If you're good at absorbing information, this may play against you - because you may only absorb a lot of garbage before you find an ounce of gold. I find it beneficial overall though.

There is good and bad in every industry, the same way there are good and bad people in the world. If this is something you want to do, then by all means you should pursue it. It is a very, very, VERY competitive field. My advice would be to get your degree in math and/or economics. If your school has an investment club, you should join that also. While you are still a student, you can work as an intern and get a taste of it and see if you really like that environment.

Yes, it is stressful, and it can be terribly exciting as well. It is a lot of hard work, but the rewards can be tremendous. If you have the technical ability you can go as far as you like in that field, so the best thing you can do now is to study hard.

I intern for a trade association for futures exchanges, and help with member relations. I know I could never work making financial decisions; I can't even buy office supplies on my own. But I can communicate the best information to my membership, even better than some of my older colleagues.

From my perspective, two areas of finance are growing faster than all others: derivatives and financial regulation. Derivatives are ballooning because so many firms use them to hedge risk. Take credit default swaps. Ten years ago, their notional value was only half a trillion dollars. Now, it's $650 trillion, and most of those are OTC. Congress will soon require those contracts to be standardized and cleared, creating an economy of scale in that market.

Next is financial regulation and financial law, the part I personally enjoy. By July 4, Barack Obama will sign the largest reorganization of the US financial regulatory structure since the Great Depression. The federal government will create thousands of new jobs just to keep up with the new regulations, let alone keep up with financial innovation. This will call for lawyers, lobbyists, communications specialists, and an army of support staff for firms to keep up. The EU seems to be making similar regulations, either leading to synergies or (if theirs are different than ours), confusion.

I'm not sure how I addressed your question, but I hope this helps you out.

Thanks to everyone who's replied, your answers have been very helpful

I ordered The Big Short yesterday, hoping it'll teach me a bit about how this stuff applies to the real world and the effects it can have, etc.

It's very competitive to get into this field. increasingly so since the financial melt-down. Most people in this area are a-types, and very extroverted. Also many went to ivy league schools and have family or friends in the industry to give them a leg up. That being said, I hope you succeed. No other advice than that.