Vious and Associates is a small broker-dealer trying to generate more business. To this end, the firm had a professional four-color brochure printed that provides the years of industry experience of its management along with other information. The firm’s founder, Ms. D. Vious, is listed as having over 30 years of experience in the industry. Ms. D. Vious has worked for broker-dealers for over 30 years, but for 20 of those 30 years, she was a secretary. Has D. Vious violated any securities laws?

Ken Con is an agent with Blue Sky Broker-Dealers. He gets up early each morning so that he can study any late-breaking news that may affect the markets and figure out ways to incorporate this news into conversations with select clients in order to pressure them to restructure their portfolios by selling holdings they have in one particular industry to invest the money in another particular industry. Ken has been very successful with this strategy and executes more trades for his clients than any other agent with the firm, but is he in danger of losing his license?

Which of the following statements would not be in violation of NASAA rules regarding the sale of investment company shares? I. “Investing your money in shares of this money market mutual fund is identical to putting your money in a savings account at a bank, except the money market fund provides a higher return.” II. “Our U.S. government bond fund is invested only in government bonds issued by the U.S. government and is, therefore, a risk-free investment.” III. “You are investing $22,000 in this fund today. The fund has a 5% load at this investment level, but if you sign a letter of intent to invest another $3,000 within the next 13 months, your load will be reduced to 4%. If something comes up and you can’t invest the extra $3,000 within 13 months, you will only need to pay the difference in the two loads.”

Which of the following may an investment adviser not use in an attempt to solicit new clients?

Which of the following scenarios describes activities that are disallowed under the NASAA Model Rules? I. Broker-dealer Anon observes that a client placed a stop loss order to sell her 1,500 shares of Amazon.com stock for $131 when the stock was selling for $134. Anon sold the stock for $133 when it started to fall during the day and credited the client’s account with $131 per share when stock dropped further to $129 a share. II. Penny is an agent with Broker-dealer Anon. She recently recommended that a client buy a stock that Penny thought would do well. As it turned out, Penny was wrong, and she offers to refund the commission that the client paid her. III. Broker-dealer Anon is part of the selling group of a hot new IPO. As such, the firm purchases 50% of the shares for its own portfolio and sells the remainder to the public.