Becoming one of the best online stock traders began when Independent Investor 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.