Investor's Business Daily's Journey From A Legacy Media Company To A Community-Driven, Financial Research Company

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.
 
Founded in 1984, Investor’s Business Daily started its humble beginnings as a newspaper publication, originally titled Investor’s Daily. Then in the mid-’90s,  the company changed its name to Investor’s Business Daily and has since grown into the financial research hub that it is today.
 
Since its start, IBD was a very data-centric publication that focused primarily on fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and market timing.
 
“We still keep those core themes throughout everything we do,” said Jerry Ferrara, CEO of Investor’s Business Daily. “But today, our business is a digital recurring revenue model. So, it's really transformed since our early print days.” 
 
The overall core purpose for IBD, established by the founder of the company William O’ Neil, has been to enable financial independence. Which for IBD, touches all aspects of its business and service offerings. 
 
“Our business continues to grow rapidly and more consumers are engaging with us now than ever before,” said Ferrara. “And I think that's the most important thing to the O'Neil family. Beyond any of our business success and financial success, it's all about helping investors make more money in the market, and more so, gaining financial independence.”

Product Portfolio

What may have started as a newspaper has transitioned into a company with a wealth of financial products. Some of the most popular include Leaderboard, SwingTrader, MarketSmith, and IBD Live.

• Leaderboard is an investment tool that uses a team of experts and algorithms to provide users with IBD’s top stock picks, chart analysis, and trading plans.
• SwingTrader is a financial tool that utilizes swing trading experts to handpick stocks and make trading plans for you.
• MarketSmith is an investment research platform designed to help you find beneficial stock picks through research, charts, data, and coaching — available all in one place.
• IBD Live is an interactive broadcast where IBD's stock pickers, analysts and portfolio managers watch the market action and discuss the day’s top trade ideas.

   

“For the past four years or so, we've really focused on our central mission and distributing our information in new and different ways and across channels,” said Ferrara.
 
In 2020, there was a massive influx of traders that entered into the market, mainly young traders. One thing that IBD has been trying to do is help to expand its research and tools for this new generation of traders.
 
Given this, the company has some programs that will be launching soon that they hope will provide a little more guidance in financial literacy for this generation, and hopefully future generations, of prospective investors.
 
“This is hard stuff to understand. It certainly took me a long time to fully grasp the intricacies of financial markets, investing, and personal finance in general,” said Ferrara. “So we are embarking on a number of initiatives that go beyond what had been our focus of really providing an edge in the financial markets for investors to now reach retail investors of all types and across all time horizons.”

The IBD Community

Arguably, one of the most profound aspects of IBD has been the community it has developed over the years. Readers of the site have set up meet-ups all around the world to talk about the markets and to help each other invest. These financial investors have even given themselves a name, The IBD Meet-up Club.
 
“It's this fantastic organic thing that our readers started. These are ultra passionate, engaged, such loyal customers of ours. So, they're using IBD and our products as a kind of the syllabus for this investing club. And it's really amazing because I have not seen a brand in our space, in the financial media or financial services space, that has that type of loyal fan base that gets together and uses the products as a way to improve their lives,” said Ferrara. “I think that speaks to the real community aspect of IBD.”
 
Overall, IBD considers itself a digital ecosystem, with IBD as the company and investors.com as the hub where all of its products and analysis live. 
 
This ecosystem is also data-centric. The company has taken the emotions out of trading to give people an unbiased perspective of how the market is performing. And that data informs its reporting, market data, products, as well as all webinars.
 
“Our perspective on long term success is giving consumers and investors the information that again ties back to our mission of helping customers make more money in the markets.”

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.