William J. O’Neil is one of the true great American success stories. Born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, Mr. O’Neil began his career as a stockbroker in 1958 with Hayden, Stone & Company, an established stock brokerage firm at the time. His fascination with the securities market led him to develop his own computerized study of what made stocks successful. From his research, Mr. O’Neil pioneered and developed the use of historical precedent to analyze equities in tandem with fundamental and technical analysis. Drawing from these discoveries, he created the CAN SLIM® investment discipline, focusing on the trends and patterns of stocks as they became top performers or underachievers. He identified seven basic factors that occurred over and over again in almost all top-performing companies as studied over eight different market cycles. He quickly became the top performing broker in his firm. After a 20-fold increase in his own account in 26 months, Mr. O’Neil branched out on his own and founded William O’Neil + Co. Incorporated in 1963. With his company, he pioneered the development of computerized securities databases. He purchased a seat on the New York Stock Exchange at the young age of 30. Mr. O’Neil summarized, adapted and published his findings as The Model Book of Greatest Stock Market Winners, which was the basis for his CAN SLIM investment discipline.
William O’Neil + Company started as an investment management and brokerage firm. Today, it has broadened its services to become a national investment information management and brokerage firm, exclusively specializing in supporting the institutional investment community. The company, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, provides equity investment ideas, securities data research, analytic tools, and trading services to more than 400 major institutional clients in the United States and abroad. William O’Neil + Company developed and maintains one of the industries most robust databases on over 40,000 data items for over 8,000 securities with information dating back to 1880. From Mr. O’Neil’s studies, he developed The William O’Neil + Co. 197 Industry Groups™, a unique classification system for all U.S. equities based upon an in-depth study of company and industry factors.
Realizing the need to deliver his time-sensitive information ahead of the competition, in 1973 Mr. O’Neil founded O’Neil Data Systems, Inc. (“ODS”). As a high-speed printing facility, ODS pioneered the field of database publishing using state-of-the-art computer technology. Today, ODS specializes in producing time-sensitive publications for many companies in a variety of fields.
In 1984, Mr. O’Neil designed and launched Investor’s Daily (later to be renamed Investors Business Daily®), the first national business newspaper to compete successfully with The Wall Street Journal. Mr. O’Neil used his years of experience in economic and business research and his massive historical database to fill a daily information gap that existed for the individual investor and business community.
In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Mr. O’Neil is a successful writer, authoring several best-selling books on investing in the stock market. Mr. O’Neil’s book, How To Make Money In Stocks—A Winning System In Good Times Or Bad, published by McGraw-Hill, is in its third revised edition and was the best-selling investment book of 1988. Mr. O’Neil also wrote the bestseller 24 Essential Lessons For Investment Success and the book The Successful Investor, authored in 2004.
To date, Mr. O’Neil continues to conduct lectures across the country to sold-out audiences of institutional and individual investors on his strategies for identifying winning stocks and minimizing losses.
Mr. O’Neil has received numerous accolades including being recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Luminaries of the Century by TJFR Group and MasterCard International. He also received the 2002 Classic Award of Recognition from the AeA, the largest high-tech industry group in the United States. In 2004, The Stock Trader’s Almanac devoted its 37th edition to Mr. O’Neil. He received the prestigious “Spirit of Lincoln” award in 2005 from the Lincoln Club of Los Angeles, recognizing him for his significant contributions to society. Mr. O’Neil was honored for his research and efforts in developing a plan to help jumpstart the American economy.