Where should I start if i wish for a career in securities and investment management?

college (maybe even high school)

I would start with Business Administration.

Get a degree in Economics from a top-tier school. Preferably, from an Ivy League school. If you can get sponsorship to take the Series 7 Exam, go for it.

I'm assuming you're talking mainly about fund management as well as private equity, and not investment management within corporations. Well, if you don't have a college degree, you definitely should work on taking care of that first (a master's degree would make you that much more marketable). The fact is, investment management is probably the most competitive field on Earth, even more so than investment banking I would say, and everyone is saying this is one of the toughest job markets ever.... hopefully it will get better when the "baby boomers" retire. Your career path is wide open.... but it is hard to find entry level work in this field. A stock brokerage is a good place to start if you can't find anywhere else that will take you. Most of the greats (i.e. Buffett, Soros, etc.), when they were ready to make their move, didn't work their way up any ladder; they just started their own hedge fund, and you too could do the same, although you would probably only be able to attract funds from friends and family, mainly family. But it IS a start, and if you establish a great record here, you might be able to land a job at one of the BIG funds already established, which handle billions. Anyway, if you want to try to work your way up, I think you'd best shoot for research analyst positions at investment banks and hedge funds. It's hard to even get in the door at this level though. For instance, many hedge funds are now hiring a lot of "quants" who have Ph.Ds in math and/or computer science. If you can't land a position here straight out of college, perhaps it would be best to go back to school and get a higher degree, such as a law degree or MBA. But anyway, as I was saying, few people start out in this field... most of them enter from other fields such as investment banking (this is probably the biggest source of IM employees), corporate law, and corporate finance.