Adam Bold's New Book Adam Bold’s signature down-to-earth style and common sense approach to investing has made him a frequent guest with financial news reporters, in addition to his nationally syndicated radio show that attracts millions of listeners each week. He has an ability to explain complex financial concepts and put them in easy-to-understand language. The Bold Truth About Investing In times of economic uncertainty, it is vital to protect your hard-earned assets. Adam Bold distills his many years of experience into 10 streamlined commandments for investing. These principles help both novice and seasoned investors navigate the markets to take back control of their financial investments. Available at fine retailers everywhere Including these online bookstores: Amazon.com BarnesandNoble.com Powells.com

Read an excerpt from the Introduction to The Bold Truth About Investing

I began my career in financial services more than seventeen years ago. With three generations of accountants already in my family, I seemed destined to become an accountant. My great-grandfather, the oldest child in his family, found his way to the Midwest in the early 1900s in need of a trade, so he became an accountant and established his business in Kansas City, Kansas. Interestingly, he worked from an office located on the same block where two brothers began a rival firm that later became the tax preparation giant H&R Block. Both of my grandfathers were CPAs, and my dad was a CPA and tax attorney. Yes, I truly seemed destined to become an accountant. But destiny doesn’t always become reality.

My accounting career got off to an early start. Beginning at age twelve, I spent summers at my grandfather’s accounting practice, learning how to reconcile bank accounts and prepare payroll, income statements, and other vital records. So I learned from an early age the importance of understanding financial statements and financial issues. The work was tedious, but invaluable for my eventual livelihood.

Not only did we prepare taxes for various companies, but we also prepared personal taxes for their owners and officers. I frequently saw that most people who actively traded stocks lost money. It was common to see a successful business owner lose 20 percent or more of his stock portfolio in a year. During this time I gained valuable insight into the reality of stock picking.

I worked for my grandfather for several years after college and trained to be an accountant, because after all, an accounting career was my destiny. But again, destiny isn’t always reality.

One day in 1991, my grandfather decided he wasn’t enjoying the daily grind as much as he once had. Although he had vowed to never retire, my grandfather decided that this was now the right choice after all and he offered me his business. My grandfather’s retirement forced me to choose my direction.

The truth was, I didn’t enjoy the accounting business, reading columns of numbers every day. I politely declined the offer. So at age twenty-seven, married and expecting our first child, I went to work for Smith Barney.

I chose this path because the world of investments had always intrigued me. I remembered those successful business owners who lost money in the stock market, but I also knew that money could be made in the markets. Both my father and grandfather were investors; it had been natural, when I was born, for them to gift me with stock, and investments and world events were common topics of discussion at the dinner table.

Because I was exposed to discussions of financial investments and accounting principles from an early age, when I went to work for Smith Barney I believed I knew more about the markets than the average guy. But knowledge of the markets and knowledge of how to be a stockbroker are two different things. I quickly learned that I didn’t know anything about being a stockbroker.

During my new-hire training, I received a minimal amount of education on investments; the bulk of my training centered around selling. I quickly learned that the ability to “cold call” would be essential to my success as a broker.

I suppose I had a knack for cold calling, because I soon became ranked among the top students in my class of sixty. I spent my days sitting in a cubicle with a headset, calling thousands of people to get a handful of clients. It wasn’t easy, but I was doing well, very well, and earning a six-figure income.

Over time, however, Smith Barney changed. After two company acquisitions, Smith Barney went from 2,500 brokers to 14,000 brokers. Up until that point, I could sit with a potential client and discuss financial needs and goals. Now Smith Barney began to tell us what to sell. When Smith Barney XYZ Fund came out, I was expected to sell a certain amount of it. About this time, headhunters began calling, and I knew I needed to work for someone else—a company that hadn’t been through these mergers and didn’t do business this way. I moved on to Prudential Securities.

At Prudential I gained an important insight. I discovered that I love helping people with their investments. I didn’t want to sell people something that wasn’t going to help them. I wanted people to understand their investments and why some were better suited for them than others. As time went by, I became better and better at helping people.

In the brokerage industry I was selling load funds, because that was all we were allowed to sell. I didn’t make as much money selling mutual funds as I did trading stock, but it dawned on me that over the long run, clients holding mutual funds earned a much better return—if they were decent funds—than did the clients who were buying and selling individual stocks. I was making a lot more money from the stock clients, but the clients in mutual funds were more successful in building their wealth.

I needed to head in a new direction again. All at once, in the middle of the night in 1995, it came to me: I would provide advice on mutual funds for a fee basis instead of selling whatever I could get someone to buy on transactional basis. I could build a business around selling mutual funds.

As an independent investment adviser, with no ties to any company, I opened The Mutual Fund Store with the purpose of helping others build their wealth. You’d think this would be a commonsense approach. Amazingly, thirteen years after launching The Mutual Fund Store in 1996, in 2009 we remain the only national fee-based investment advisory organization in the vast segment of the market better known as middle America.