William J. O'Neil (1933-2023) built IBD's "10 Secrets To Success" column as an action plan for anyone who wants to create a better life for oneself or for others.
Secret No. 1? "How You Think Is Everything." In other words, stay focused on success.
Secret No. 10: "Be Honest And Dependable; Take Responsibility."
Secrets Beyond 10
Perhaps an 11th secret helps the founder of Investor's Business Daily and Investors.com continue to influence readers today: No matter how big you've hit it, be modest. Stay humble.
Editor's Note: Several years ago, the Chartered Market Technician Association honored Investor's Business Daily founder William O'Neil with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Bill O'Neil was one of the first people on Wall Street — and remains one of the few — to combine fundamental research with technical analysis, giving everyday investors the tools to change their lives. For readers who might not know the man who built IBD, we are updating and republishing this Leaders & Success profile, which first appeared in 2014 during IBD's 30th anniversary.
If you walked into his office at IBD's former Los Angeles headquarters a few years ago, you would have found it similar to the way it was about 10 years earlier in 2004, when IBD celebrated its 20th birthday.
The room was the same size as before, with barely enough space to house a conference table and shelves. Same metal desk. Same gray carpet. No mahogany paneling. No Impressionist or postmodernist paintings on the wall.
Instead, it featured a portrait of a dog, front pages of IBD and a photo of O'Neil meeting President Reagan in the Oval Office in the 1980s.
When a reporter asked O'Neil, "Outside of starting IBD, what is the achievement you are most proud of?" the Oklahoma native, who passed away on May 28, 2023, at the age of 90, arched his eyebrows, breathed deeply and shrugged.
"I don't think of that, don't look at that very much," he replied. "I think starting a business is important because you've got the total freedom to start and create what you want. We've obviously created products that have helped a lot of people."
He added: "If you want to start a business, you've got to have some experience in the field. If you're going to be selling peanut butter or something, you better have some experience with peanut butter."
William O'Neil, A Profile
O'Neil never joined a conversation with an intention to boast. He publicly cared less about what success he had and more about the organization's mission: Make readers smarter investors.
"I think the stock market is complicated itself, and not very many people really understand how the stock market works," he said. "If you're going to invest in the stock market, you're going to make mistakes. The typical person doesn't want to buy and then turn around and sell it for a loss. To some extent, to be very successful in the market, you've got to do what you have to do, which means taking some profits and taking some losses."
O'Neil did very well in a large number of stocks over the decades. In 1962, as a broker at Hayden Stone in Los Angeles, he made profits of more than $200,000 (more than $1.5 million in today's money) in a short play on discount department store chain Korvette, a long investment in Chrysler and a buy in Syntex, one of the first companies to cash in on the birth control pill.
That haul helped the graduate of Southern Methodist University start his own institutional stock research firm — William O'Neil + Co. — on Nov. 7, 1963. One of the company's early achievements: managing money for the Vatican.
In 2023, O'Neil's research firm celebrated 60 years in the business. It remains a force in the world of institutional stock research.
He was one of the first people to use computers to collect vital stock information, and one of the first to place key information on fundamentals and buying trends by mutual funds and top money management firms right on the stock chart.
William O'Neil Tip: Keep Changing And Progressing
These simple innovations made his products stand out immediately.
"How did William O'Neil + Co. survive and grow over 50 years? We concentrated on stocks, the one thing we know best," O'Neil wrote 10 years ago in the introduction to the book "50 Years of Independent Market Vision." "People asked me why I didn't buy bonds or commodities. The answer was simple: I didn't want to be distracted."
He added: "Just the concept of concentrating, seeing all the details, is important to innovation and being the best."
Twenty-one years after founding the securities company, O'Neil in 1984 launched Investor's Daily (later changed to Investor's Business Daily) with a mind toward building a new business and helping individual investors use the same tools as top money managers to find stock market winners.
Today, IBD is more than a paper and a website. It hosts dozens of beginning to advanced workshops as well as IBD Summits to help investors of all levels, including money managers, to become smarter in the stock market and make consistent profits through the platforms of Investors.com, Leaderboard, SwingTrader and MarketSmith.
Awareness of IBD continues to grow. In 2020, Investor's Business Daily hit as many as 20 million article views per month through the website Investors.com. The company was acquired by News Corp, parent of the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and other financial information and news companies, in May 2021 for $275 million.
Long-Distance Applause
Brian Edwards, a former high school English teacher who moved to Southeast Asia to start an online toy manufacturing business, first met O'Neil during a two-day Level 4 Masters program workshop in Los Angeles in 2004.
An active growth investor, Edwards asked O'Neil about the paper's online direction and whether he felt overwhelmed by the changes sweeping the media industry.
"I was looking for insights. Bill's response was knowledgeable and reassuring, down-to-earth, the meat-and-potatoes variety. I like meat and potatoes," Edwards told IBD. "Bill's investment approach is similar. He urges one to follow historically valid rules and not to get overwhelmed by emotion. He has found stability in an environment others find chaotic."
Did O'Neil ever take losses in stocks? Of course. One reason for his success in the market was the ability to consistently keep losses small, usually in the 3%-4% range.
He quickly learned the benefit of acting fast when you realize you have made a mistake.
In addition, early in his stock-investment career, O'Neil made a point to meet Gerald Loeb in New York. Loeb was making serious money as a stockbroker and wrote the investment classic "The Battle for Investment Survival."
In that book, he advised people to limit losses to 10% in any stock.
Loeb, a California native, went to Los Angeles and visited O'Neil, who recalled: "As he was leaving, I asked Loeb, 'Do you always sell every stock in trouble at 10%?' He said, 'I would hope to be out of them much quicker than that.' "
Onward In Oklahoma
Born in Oklahoma City, O'Neil moved with his family to Muskogee, roughly 40 miles southeast of Tulsa, when he was young.
His father had abandoned the family by then, but O'Neil said his aunt motivated him to strive for success. She encouraged him to sell magazines to women in the neighborhood when he was in grade school.
O'Neil listened. Soon he landed a better-paying job on a newspaper route. He loved sports, particularly baseball, and worked hard to earn the extra $20 needed to buy a new glove or bat. After school, he hustled to finish his newspaper route so he could join baseball games.
"I was a pitcher. You're competing with nine batters all game long. You can do all right, then in the sixth inning, one of them beats you," said O'Neil, who also played the cornet. "I think I learned something from sports and a couple other activities."
O'Neil stressed that it's crucial to listen and learn from the very best in their respective fields.
William O'Neil: Bestselling Writer On Stocks
The same philosophy applies to books. O'Neil once bought a library of investment books and found that most were junk. Only five or six really helped him learn how to make money in the stock market.
O'Neil himself produced four editions of "How to Make Money in Stocks," a bestseller.
"Everyone and his brother has written a book on investing," he said. "Find out who is successful in a field, and if they've written a book, then the writing is from somebody who's been there, done that and been successful in that field. That, I think, is the whole key."
O'Neil was upbeat about the stock market's prospects over the next 30 years. "The country will grow and continue to grow as it's done in the past. You cannot hold human nature down," he said. "And you've got this freedom in the country, so there's a lot of opportunity. There will be new inventions, new developments, new companies. That I wouldn't worry about."
"You have this constant renewal of new products coming along, new services coming along, and a company does pretty well for a while. Then the company either gets too large to grow or is replaced by someone else. That's been going on for cycle after cycle after cycle."
O'Neil's Keys
- Legendary investor who founded the William O'Neil + Co. investment company and Investor's Business Daily.
- Overcame: Resistance to technical analysis by some longtime investors.
- Lesson: "The country will grow and continue to grow as it's done in the past. You cannot hold human nature down."
Please follow Chung on Twitter: @saitochung and @IBD_DChung
