Mike Carpenter is a 35-year veteran of the investment business and founder of his own consulting firm, CarpenterAssociates. Born and raised in a military family, he grew up living in numerous places on both the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as the mid-west before his family settled down in Southern California, where he went to high school and college. 

     Although he has always been intrigued by the investment business, he worked his way through college as a medical research lab technician, clinical lab tech and then graduated with a B.A. in Biology. After working for a few years as a microbiologist in the pharmaceutical industry, he became re-interested in helping investors deal with the ever changing variety, challenges, and opportunities of investing. After extensive personal research and efforts, he was selected for a financial advisor training program with PaineWebber. That training included a special program at the firm's offices on Wall Street. He graduated from the training program and after successfully completing all the required securities examinations, was licensed as a financial advisor a few weeks after the OPEC Oil Embargo in late 1973.

     That extremely challenging investment environment early on, was the foundation of his over 35 year career in the investment business, and instilled in him a deep respect for the importance of risk management. Ever since those early days he's been personally advising investors, then financial professionals, and investment firms facing turbulent investment environments from raging inflation, stagflation, and stratospheric interest rates to disinflation, recessions, panics, crashes, booms and busts. Mike has held national level positions with premier investment firms for over 25 years. He has also conducted hundreds of investment workshops and seminars around the country for investors and financial advisers alike. In addition, he's been a guest lecturer at The Securities Industry Institute at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and hosted investment industry programs on the campuses of Harvard and Columbia Universities.

Mike has been extremely interested in studying the subjects of risk and risk management for many years. With the accelerating pace of worldwide change and the volatility and uncertainty it creates for investors everywhere, he's been focused on identifying new, non- technical, user-friendly ways to help investors better understand and manage those risks. Mike's determination to make it easier for investors to better understand and manage risk led him to research the information and develop the approaches that are the foundation of his book, The "Risk-Wise" Investor