Something tells me you don't really believe any of this crap. Work on coming across better as a few members here think you are about to drop your degree.
I'm not sure about exactly how these conversations happened but many people out there are disgruntled by whatever degree they did so look up at degrees like maths. They usually have to shit angry advice on graduates to make up for failings or as they never got over being made grovel for piddly little jobs following their own graduation. They usually have no clue and probably think actuary, analytics, risk, quant are all the same thing and interchangeable terms. Hell they probably even think accountant and acupuncturist are the same thing as those jobs. Some people are just daft ignorant pigs.
Anyway, in terms of steps forward...
You need to understand market logic before making choices. When looking at a target industry it helps to understand that many mathematical roles require you to be able to get to work straight away. This is why MSc or PhDs are often sought after. It's got shite all to do with competition. I was using modelling techniques from my masters for a pricing project within 3 days of joining my first firm and had already built RM queries on day 2. You simply could not hire a BA and train them up unless they were an IMO veteran with a penchant for financial maths and published work. Hiring managers didn't see me as an MSc per se but as someone with C++ skills that had priced derivatives and that was in touch with the markets.
Other stuff like actuary will probably involve entering graduate schemes and won't demand the same in terms of hiring criteria but in any case I would always finish what I started. Finish your degree and don't let wanting a career get in the way of studies at any level. A trap MSc students sometimes fall into is thinking upping application numbers while studying for exams will give them a role as they are afraid of finishing with no job, thus distracting from exams and winding up with neither job nor MSc. I'm not sure about PhDs but I definitely saw some bozos in my MSc try the blanket application approach when they should have been polishing their thesis and studying.
Do look at examples of models or processes used in industries now as you're not under pressure and listen to your mind and body and do a PhD if you really want to do research in stuff that interests you, or otherwise a related MSc. Learn to be discerning - I get the same feel of overly positive or negative from people but with a little standing back and investigation you can figure it out.
There is a lot of advice on threads like this to not do a PhD if you have a job in mind, but I wonder as the only people I've seen drop PhDs were either people that got a job then dropped it or the handful of classic "a bit like Sheldon Cooper - knows physics, maths and C++ inside out but otherwise thick as pigshit" cases I've met, as opposed to people doing a PhD in financial maths with quant roles in mind.
