Career Decisions and which Path to Follow

As you know so far, my dream in life is to work on Wall Street mostly notably for Goldman Sachs. This pursuit began when I was thirteen years old. After collecting McDonalds shares on an annual basis as birthday presents I decided I could get a better return so as a result I opened up a brokerage account with Scottrade. I still can remember the day the excitement of making my first trade which was the purchase of Google at around $250. Since then I have become an avid trader learning the ins and outs of the game. I have had both my ups and downs and overall my risk tolerance has grown even though I become strategically smarter as time passes. Even though my brokerage account started as a mere form of amusement it has stimulated my passion for finance. Going throughout High School I was confused on what part of Finance I wish to pursue, for a long time I thought I wanted to be a Financial Advisor. This career seemed perfect and I was so sold that during my Junior year I emailed around and landed an internship with two financial advisors who managed around $200 million for Ameriprise Financial. Going through the year long internship I realized this was nothing close to what I wanted to pursue as a career. The job of a financial advisor was very dull and mundane, very little involvement among the markets more of a babysitter who is there to please customers and preach to them that their money was safe. Throughout the year my two advisors would ask me for stock tips and I wowed them with my individual performance within that year as my portfolio grossed 79%. Anyways now I was on a new mission to find a new career. Now I felt that I needed to work for an Investment Bank after hearing the lucrative bonuses that were being handed out. Growing up in Hong Kong I was able to network around with some high-profile individuals, one of which was the Global Head of Equity Capital Markets at HSBC. After a few sent emails I set up a spring externship with HSBC in their London headquarters. I was thrilled and instead of going on a Senior Spring Break trip I headed off to London to explore the world of Investment Banking. I can remember walking into the 50-story headquarters wowed me with the amount of traffic going on, a completely different world compared to the 20-man office i interned for at Ameriprise. During the internship I started off on ECM, meeting and shadowing all the people getting a feel of the industry. This was great and all yet on my third day my trip was made. On this day I made it up to the trading floor. The shear excitement of trader yelling and the constant chatter seemed a perfect fit for me. Leaving London I had a complete new sense of the financial industry and had a destined career in mind.