Why Investor’s Business Daily Was Created

In 1983, entrepreneur and legendary investor William J. O’Neil realized that both individual and professional investors needed more relevant data, and O’Neil found that most newspapers made readers sift through too much news and information to try and figure out the relevant facts in their investing. He himself found it difficult to read print publications for conclusive or relevant investing data. His goal in designing IBD was to not only cut through mass information, but to report and highlight the data that was more pertinent to finding emerging stock leadership – and also, discuss the perspectives not being covered by the media. As a noted stock market veteran with decades of investing successes, O’Neil’s forward thinking approach involved databasing all stock performance statistics and creating programs to highlight top performing stocks. This might seem obvious by today’s standards, but O’Neil was the first in the 1960s to computerize stock market information and create historical tracking of stock performance.   It netted eye-opening conclusions that created a proven stock-picking strategy which honed in on how stocks performed before their biggest price moves. O’Neil created many screens and IBD’s well-known stock tables that rate stocks against others.  Many subsequent innovations over the years went into Investor’s Business Daily, making the paper unique, groundbreaking and without peer. The content continues to evolve each year, but is always derived from programming the O’Neil stock computers to sift for stocks with emerging leadership performance—a primary component of a stock’s future potential.  He also followed with studies of stocks topping and turning down, so that it is more clearly understood today how stocks break down. These findings have enabled investors to use IBD’s screens and research to build their skill, and many now make more money in the market. Investor’s ability to now zero in on growth in emerging stages has resulted in long lists of success stories, many of which can be found here. Of course, not all succeed if they are unwilling to break bad habits or don't take the time, effort and discipline to improve their investment methods.