Pursuing a Career as a investment manager?

Hello I am a software professional in Northern VA. I want to get involved in stock trading. At present I do not have any idea about it. I want to educate myself before I jump into stock trading. Are there any university courses that anyone recommends that would give a good understanding and scope of this profession.
Thank You

Thank you for the answers.

I wanted to rephrase my question. I do not want to become a investment manager to manage other peoples money. I want to invest money for myself. I want to make this as an additional source of income. But I am not comfortable blindly investing in stocks. I am a little old school. I would like to take some unviersity classes. For example if you anyone of you have done an MBA and can recommend me that ok here are the 2 or 3 classes that you really found usefull and you could extend its knowledge to learn more about stock trading.. That is what I am looking for.

I opened an account in eTrade and I dont even know name of few stocks I want to invest in. So I want to approach it the right way through formal education and learning how to use the various tools available for investment.

Good luck to you both. You should both get MBAs. I am right now, and I can tell you that asset management is one of the most competitive fields there is. Warren Buffet is looking for a new CIO, maybe you should shoot him an email. AG Edwards is an investment company that accepts people with non-financial backgrounds into their training program. However, you will be expected to open an investment advisor franchise in a certain location. There is no asset management company that I know of that will hire you to do anything other then sort mail unless you have a finance degree. I know I wouldn't let a software guy or an IT guy within 10 miles of my money unless you had the appropriate education and work experience.

me too..im the it guy in an investment firm. i would like to become an investment manager or analyst..but i dont know how. and i dont want to go back to school to get a useless finance degree.

from past experience...i learn everything from working..school was useless.

so any suggestion here?

All academic research shows that one cannot successfully pick stocks and time the market over any period of time. This research has won multiple Noble Prizes and is proven again and again to be true. There are significantly better ways to invest your money. Let me know if you're interested at all in learning a little bit more about it.