Becoming one of the best online stock traders began when III was founded in 1995 at a kitchen table in West Hartford, Connecticut by Gregory Spear. Mr. Spear had begun to test different investing systems and, in doing so, had invented a revolutionary, yet inherently simple process that worked amazingly well. This system, which he called "Consensus," uncovered stock picks agreed upon by the best performing independent (non-Wall Street) stock analysts and money managers.

With the Consensus System as its backbone, Independent Investor launched its first financial newsletter, "The Spear Report" (TSR) on November 6, 1995 with an advertisement in Investor's Business Daily. The launch was a success and from then on, a combination of word-of-mouth, selected advertising, and outstanding portfolio performance did the rest. (click here to take a 5 minute tour of the system)

Over the next several years, investors became overwhelmed with the vast number of analysts, self-proclaimed gurus, newsletters, television shows, magazines, and web sites that purported to be experts. Through it all, the Consensus System provided TSR subscribers with a sensible and simple method of aggregating the advice of the best of the proven experts.

TSR responds to an instinctive search by investors for concurrence of expert opinion. Most independent investors are naturally trying to piece different sources of advice together to come up with a great stock pick. For instance, a person might hear about a stock on the news, and then hear it mentioned later in the week by a friend at a cocktail party. To the investor, this stock suddenly has a "buzz" associated with it and looks attractive as a buy. TSR takes this simple act of human nature to the next level by applying a systematic method of qualifying and quantifying the advice.

In early 2002, Independent Investor, Inc. purchased the assets of Validea.com, a financial information provider that, for four years, monitored the performance of over 30 different financial media sources.

Today, Independent Investor has over thousands of subscribers to the publications it offers, including a daily Professional Edition, a niche publication dedicated to the security and homeland defense industry called Spear's Security Industry Analyst, and an options newsletter, The Options Professor. TSR products are some of the best-selling newsletters in the Zacks Investment Research "newsletter store," which features over 40 different publications, and our publications are also featured on Forbes.com.  Also, Mr sSPear has become one of the best online stock traders with his new day trding service Daytraderhotline.com.