IBD started up mainly because of the three hour gap between the coasts; the HOTS column in the WSJ was already having impact by the time the alarm clocks went off in LA. This was before the kind of wired world we now, I guess, enjoy.
Back in 1987’s crash (back when I was messing around in the market, in other words) the computer system for the NYSE, which had been considered seriously overbuilt because it could handle a 250 million share day, wound up three hours behind, something like that. M.W., the kinda hot broker down where I did my small amount of trading, told me over the phone that she didn’t expect to get out of there before 8 pm, and joked that if I cared about them, I’d bring them a pizza. Which I almost did, in hopes of gettin’ some, uh, stock tips.
Now a 250 million share day is considered a little slow. Amazing.
At one time the IBD seems pleasantly conservative compared to the WSJ, which by itself wasn’t exactly a liberal-leaning outlet. The go-go 1980s and 1990s made a lot of left-wingers rich, and also saw the rise of TCP/IP and the www. And the web made a smaller number of left-wingers rich as Croesus.
Redistribution will only work if conservatives run the apparatus. ;’)
Fair enough. I consider it a high quality paper, stock-analysis wise. I’d swear, the last dozen IBD editorials I’ve read have been unequivocally and unabashedly capitalistic, conservative, etc; That’s why I was surprised to see a proven, flaming liberal idiot like Eugene Robinson published in it!
The market, as we know, goes through periods where fundamentals matter a lot, and other periods where they are utterly irrelvant. I consider us to be in the latter phase now. FWIW.
I know and know of a few guys who use IBDs’ tools quite extensively...perhaps Gary Kaltbaum is the most well known. He has a daily internet & over the air radio show where he follows the market. I consider him pretty savvy and his show is pretty good. Another trader guy I know lives in LA. Haven’t kept up with him, but I suspect he wiped himself out!
It’s pretty hard to argue with O’Neill’s appraoch, it’s quite comprehensive and certainly grounded in historical example and classic money management. But as I said, often times the market couldn’t care less about classic fundamentals.