Complaint Rating:

Company information:
William O'Neil & Co.
12655 Beatrice Street
Los Angeles, California
United States
investors.com

I bought this paper to get a little more news about investments. The first problem with the paper is it is very expensive. It is three dollars for the weekend edition and two dollars for a regular paper. Also, it is hard to find unlike the Wall Street Journal which is sold just about everywhere. Keep in mind unlike the Wall Stree Journal (WSJ), IBD only has two parts to its paper yet charges considerably more.

The paper uses computerized modeling to suggest which stocks have the most mommentum and according to theory are most likely to continue to go up. Bascially it uses a type of technical analysis. I do not know of anyone who has ever gotten wealthy from technical analysis of stocks. In fact, if you were to look at some of the wealthiest stock investors such as Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, George Soros, etc. they all did it through value investing.

In addition to that the paper is a marketing piece for William O'Neil and company. He offers investments seminars that run as high as nearly $10, 000 per seminar. So the paper is not so much reporting about investment news as it is about selling William O'Neil's investment philosophy.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the paper is that there are a lot of politics in the paper. And make no mistake about it, IBD does not even pretend to be balanced! The paper devotes several pages to politics and "opinion" which basically amounts to a daily Democratic bashing while praising Republicans no matter what happened. In the newspaper I read they praised George W. Bush's ideal for the Iraq War and his handling of it. Perhaps they did not read that almost 80% of Americans are against the War and wanted it to end.

Apparently, Mr. O'Neil is so extreme in his right-wing views that he does not believe global warming even exists, and there was an article in IBD that stated that global warming was good. The paper bashes Obama daily even though he is not in office and won the election quite handily. What is disturbing is that this is supposed to be an investment newspaper, not a political piece. If one wanted to hear a daily Democratic bashing they could turn on Fox News and save the three dollars to buy the paper.

I notice that the circulation is down substantially from just a few years ago, unlike the WSJ which has increased its circulation. Unless you want to hear a daily Democratic bashing in your Investment newspaper, and want to read about Mr. O'Neil's expensive investment seminars, I would pass on IBD and buy the Wall Street Journal!