Investor’s Biz Daily founder O’Neil dies at 90

William O'Neil

William O’Neil

William O’Neil, an investment broker who started an equity research firm and brokerage before later creating Investor’s Business Daily in 1984, has died at the age of 90.

David Saito-Chung from IBD writes, “This combination of a successful printing firm and a unique quantitatively-driven database on stocks led to the first publication of Investor’s Daily, as it was then called, on April 9, 1984. Investor’s Business Daily later became a weekly print newspaper in 2016 as the company focused even more effort on developing its digital properties, notably Investors.com and MarketSmith, as well as premium online products such as Leaderboard and SwingTrader.

“In learning from great fund managers in the past, O’Neil also changed the game of investing by providing data on the quantity and quality of institutional ownership in the best stocks.

“This perspective, reported throughout his Datagraphs product and later through unique IBD ratings including the Accumulation/Distribution Rating, is known as the I in CAN SLIM, which stands for institutional ownership.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.