Investors Business Daily Leaderboard and MarketSmith Review

About Investors Business Daily

Investors Business Daily is an online financial news and research publication offering a variety of market resources, educational tools, and platforms. The company was initially founded as a print publication in 1984 by renowned investor William O’Neil. The publication stood the test of time and eventually made its way into the online world. Today, Investors Business Daily is one of the leading market authorities, trusted by millions of visitors around the globe.

Investors Business Daily has a wide range of services, including market newsletters and trading platforms. The platform’s most popular services are called Leaderboard and Marketsmith, and those are what we’ll focus on in our Investors Business Daily review.

Keep reading to find out more about these services and how they can help you trade more effectively.

Who is William O’Neil, and Why Does it Matter?

William O’Neil is an investor, stockbroker, and respected author. Within the stock market community, he is most well-known for his book “How to Make Money in Stocks.” “How to Make Money in Stocks” explains O’Neil’s growth investing strategy, which is based on his “CAN SLIM” system. This system outlines the seven characteristics of top-performing stocks:

• Current quarterly earnings
• Annual Earnings Growth
• New Products or Services
• Supply and Demand
• Leader or Laggard
• Institutional Sponsorship
• Market Direction

The “CAN SLIM” system serves as the methodology behind the premium tools offered by Investors Business Daily. Every savvy investor and trader should be focused on the “why” behind a trading strategy, as blindly following stock picks is a recipe for disaster. Having a basic understanding of IBD’s methodology can help you better understand their stock picks and platform features.

You don’t need to be a CAN SLIM investor to make use of IBD Leaderboard or Marketsmith, but you’ll get the most value if you understand the methodology that fuels them.

Leaderboard and MarketSmith

Leaderboard and MarketSmith are two of the flagship offerings of Investors Business Daily. These platforms were built with O’Neil’s methodology in mind and serve as powerful platforms for active investors who want to outperform the market.

If you’re familiar with Day Trade Review, you know we generally focus on trading services over investing services. That said, Leaderboard and MarketSmith both incorporate elements of technical analysis, and we’ve found them to be useful for day trading, swing trading, and investing. These tools are often compared to Motley Fool and GuruFocus, so we wanted to find out which service is the best.

📈 Features	Stock Picks, Annotated Stock Charts, Screeners (Marketsmith)
💰 Pricing	$69-$149.95/month
⭐ Discounts	16% Off Annual
✅ Best For	Self-Directed Investors

What’s the Difference Between Leaderboard and MarketSmith?

Leaderboard and Marketsmith are similar and they’re both built around the same growth investing strategy. The biggest difference comes down to who they’re made for.

Leaderboard is designed for casual investors who are looking for stock recommendations backed by quality research. It’s pretty similar to Motley Fool (read our full Motley Fool review to learn more).

MarketSmith is designed for active investors who prefer to do their own research. It’s more like using Zacks or GuruFocus in terms of the level of effort required.

Let’s dive deeper into the features of both platforms so you can decide which one is the better fit for you.

Leaderboard Review

Leaderboard is essentially a stock research service backed by the time-tested strategies of IBD. The IBD team researches the best growth stocks and shares the reports with Leaderboard subscribers. IBD claims that Leaderboard outperformed the S&P 500 by 16.8% from 2020 through 2022 (an impressive feat).

Pricing

Leaderboard can be accessed for either $69/month or $699/year. You can try out the platform with a 3-week trial for $9.95.

At this price point, Leaderboard is ideal for investors of all levels. We recommend starting with the trial, moving onto the monthly subscription, and then switching to an annual plan if you decide you like the platform.

The Platform: Leaderboard

Upon logging into the platform, you will see a quick update on stocks from the “Leaders” list, “Leaders Near a Buy Point” and a “Leaders” list.

“Leaders Near a Buy Point” are stocks within 5% of the recommended buy price, whereas “Leaders” are past picks that are performing well. “Leaders” may eventually make their way onto the “Leaders Near a Buy Point” list in the case of a pullback or updated research.

Each section shows the company, the current stock price, and the research provided by the IBD team. The dashboard is well-organized and offers a great snapshot for investors who don’t want to spend hours researching and reading reports. IBD’s team does a great job of researching companies and summarizing the information in a simple format.

The dashboard also focuses on quality over quantity. IBD isn’t making recommendations for the sake of it. If there are only a few good buying opportunities at any time, the dashboard will reflect that. It’s similar to Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor (see our full comparison here).

When scrolling through the Leaderboard, you can choose to add a stock to your watch list, analyze the chart, read recent articles, or set an alert.

Leaderboard Charts

The charts are one of the best features of the Leaderboard platform, second only to the stock picks themselves. They help traders and investors get a better understanding of the history of a company and its current standing.

The charts are beautifully annotated with technical patterns and events. They provide a trading rationale for IBD’s bullish thesis. IBD also defines the ideal buy zones on the chart, making it easy for casual investors to plan entries.

To the side of the chart, you can get a quick snapshot of a company’s fundamental performance, technical performance, and market benchmarks. Color-coding makes it easy to identify red flags in a company’s fundamentals.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture section provides a daily market update. It’s easy to read and packed with valuable information about the stock market.

While you can choose to view “Intraday Updates,” we found that the real value is in the “Daily Big Picture.” Having all of the information in one place saves you time you may have otherwise spent jumping between CNBC and Wall Street Journal articles.

IBD Sector Leaders

The Sector Leaders section provides updates on some of the top stocks in each section. It is frequently updated and follows the same format as the stocks listed on the dashboard.

This is a great idea generation tool for investors looking to diversify or build positions in specific sectors.

IBD 50

For those looking to dig even deeper, the “IBD 50” pages show a list of IBD’s top stocks. You can choose to view the top 10 or view the full list of 50.

This tool is helpful for traders and investors looking for even more investing opportunities. The stocks listed may not be in “buy zones” yet, but may present opportunities in upcoming trading sessions.

In this sense, the platform is well-organized and caters to the needs of different types of investors. Based on your level of involvement, you can choose to view the Leaderboard (lowest involvement), Sector Leaders, or IBD 50 (highest involvement).

Final Thoughts on Leaderboard

Leaderboard is a valuable tool for investors looking to expand their portfolios by identifying potential outperformers.

IBD does an excellent job of researching stocks and keeping investors updated.

While traders may get some use out of Leaderboard, the platform is mostly geared toward growth investors due to its simplicity and longer-term investment horizons.

MarketSmith is a bit more versatile and takes Leaderboard’s capabilities to the next level.

MarketSmith Review

MarketSmith is a research platform designed for more sophisticated investors. This platform can be thought of as the “self-serve” version of Leaderboard. Whereas Leaderboard provides investors with research and stock recommendations, MarketSmith enables investors to do the research on their own. There are a few benefits to this approach:

1. You can find more trading opportunities
2. You can tailor the platform to your personal trading style

For example, if you’re primarily focused on trading small cap stocks under $20/share, you can use those criteria to filter your results in MarketSmith. Essentially, MarketSmith is a more flexible platform that allows you to implement your own strategy while still benefiting from the research provided by Investors Business Daily.

Pricing

MarketSmith can be accessed for either $149.95/month or $1,499/year. You can also choose to take a one-month trial for $29.95.

While the MarketSmith platform is more than double the cost of Leaderboard, the pricing is justified by its features. It could be argued that you get way more than double the power of a Leaderboard subscription, and we definitely preferred the MarketSmith platform.

The MarketSmith platform is loaded with powerful tools and features. It would be impossible to cover each feature in-depth, but we’ll highlight our favorites.

Education and Webinars

Upon logging in to the MarketSmith platform, you will be greeted with a few options. The first one that stands out is the education section, and most notably, the webinars.

The webinars section provides details for upcoming webinars as well as an archive of previous webinars. While not the key offering of this service, these recorded videos provide a lot of value in an industry where education can significantly affect your bottom line.

A quick glance at the archive shows topics spanning portfolio management, trading psychology, and technical analysis.

MarketSmith Charts

The MarketSmith charts are clean and packed with valuable information.

This is not your typical charting platform. Whereas platforms like TradingView and eSignal provide great charts, the true value of MarketSmith charts lies in the information and research provided. The charts are annotated with a combination of fundamental and technical data to help aid your research process.

MarketSmith uses bar charts with the following overlays:

• RS (Relative Strength)
• Pivot Points
• 50 and 200 Day Moving Averages
• EPS Annotations
• An S&P 500 Line (for benchmarking)
• Volume
• Average Volume Line
• Stochastics
• Corporate Events
• And more

You can choose to add or remove overlays via the chart menu.

Chart timeframes can be set to intraday (minutes),  daily, weekly, and monthly, depending on your trading style.

The charts are also annotated with chart patterns (based on timeframe), such as:

• Cup and Handle
• Double Bottom
• Flat Base
• Ascending Base
• Cup (Rounding Bottom)
• Consolidation

The charts do a great job of fusing technical and fundamental analysis. You can track a company’s EPS growth, S&P benchmark performance, and other key information without leaving the chart screen. The technical pattern recognition is also pretty accurate, in our experience.

The charts are also helpful for supporting decisions around trading stocks. If there is a trading opportunity for a given stock, the chart will highlight the ideal buy zone (blue), profit taking zone (green), and stop loss zone (red). This provides visual support during the trade planning process.

Here are a few other features:

• Custom chart annotations – Add your own annotations and/or technical drawings (e.g. trend lines)
• Saved layouts – The platform automatically loads your chart settings from the last login
• “Play” Feature – The play feature rotates through a list of charts automatically for quick analysis and updates

In the future, it would be nice to see the addition of candlestick charts as well as better zoom functionality. However, these aren’t critical flaws, especially since most traders will be using a dedicated charting platform in addition to MarketSmith.

Fundamental Data & Related Information

Fundamental data is laid out in the top corner of the chart.

The platform offers a few common fundamental data points as well as a few of IBD’s proprietary metrics (e.g. EPS Rating). Here is the full list of fundamental data:

• EPS Rating
• Group RS Rating
• SMR Rating
• Acc/Dis Rating
• Composite Rating
• Timeliness Rating
• Growth Rate
• Price/Earnings
• Market Cap
• Shares
• Funds

If you want even more information on a company, you can click on the “Related Information” tab on the right.

This tab will give you information on:

• Insider Ownership
• Institutional Ownership
• Fund Ownership History
• Industry and Sector Benchmarks
• News
• Options Data
• Checklist

One particularly unique feature is the “Checklist” feature. This list tells you if the stock meets the criteria of successful investors like William O’Neil, Warren Buffet, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch, and more. Checklist criteria may include EPS ratings, stock price, stock volume, return on equity, and more.

Stock Ideas

As mentioned above, one of the main benefits of MarketSmith over Leaderboard is that it allows you to cast a wider net. The platform incorporates more scanning tools and discovery features. One of those features is called “Stock Ideas.”

Stock Ideas provides pre-built scans of stocks based on a variety of criteria. Here are a few examples:

• Breaking Out Today
• Earnings – Gap Up
• Near Pivot
• Top Rated IPO’s
• Up on Volume

Once you choose a stock idea, the scan returns results. You can filter through the results manually or use the “Play” feature to rotate charts automatically.

The “Stock Ideas” feature is particularly useful for day traders and swing traders because it accounts for recent data (such as stocks gapping up or down). This can be helpful for building watch lists and planning trades.

MarketSmith Screeners

MarketSmith screeners are a gem within the platform. You can choose between pre-built scans and custom scans.

What separates MarketSmith from other scanning platforms like FinViz is a) the research that goes into planning these screeners and b) the incorporation of fundamental data. Most of the scanning platforms we’ve reviewed have been heavily biased towards technical analysis. MarketSmith screeners lean more towards fundamental analysis.

The custom screens can help you build screens that match your personal trading style and identify stocks to trade during the current market day. You can choose between over 130 technical and fundamental indicators, such as:

• SmartSelect Ratings
• Earnings
• Sales
• Industry/Sector
• Price and Volume
• And more

For example, you could scan for the best Internet-Retail stocks based on EPS and RS ratings. Similarly, you could scan for the best low-priced stocks by settings price filters.

It takes some time to find the settings that match your style, but the time invested is well worth it.

Stock Alerts

If you’re scanning for a lot of stocks and jumping from idea to idea, it can be easy to lost track of some stocks. To combat this, MarketSmith allows you to set price alerts with optional email notifications and alert notes.

There is an alerts section on the top of the chart that shows today’s alerts as well as other recent alerts.

While this is a nice feature, it would have been helpful if they offered different types of alerts, such as moving average crosses. Considering these types of alerts are available in Leaderboard, it would make sense to include them in MarketSmith as well.

Investors Business Daily Support

Chances are, with a complex platform like MarketSmith (and even simpler platforms like Leaderboard), you will run into some questions. Investors Business Daily provided great support whenever it was needed. The team was knowledgeable on the offerings, had personal trading experience, and responded promptly. There are also a good amount of resources available for learning more about the platform.

Wrapping Things Up: Which Platform is Best For You?

Overall, both platforms are worth the price tag as long as you have a plan for how to incorporate them into your trading. Both platforms are designed for investors who take a slightly more active approach to their investing (i.e., not just loading up on FANG stocks). They can also work very well for swing traders and momentum traders.

The main differentiation between the two platforms is the level of involvement required on the user’s behalf. Leaderboard is more of an advisory service whereas MarketSmith is more of a self-directed research platform.

If you’re still stuck on which platform to choose, here are some differentiators:

Leaderboard is best for:

• Growth-based strategies (CAN SLIM)
• Investors who value professional research
• Casual investors who prefer not to invest too much time in their own research
• Investors who want brief market updates and quick snapshots

Leaderboard is a great option for investors who want to be told which stocks to buy and when. Stock picks are backed by rationale and annotated charts, so investors can feel confident in their stock picks.

MarketSmith is best for:

• Diligent, research-driven investors
• Investors with a heavy focus on fundamentals
• Investors looking to track a larger pool of stocks
• Investors with unique strategies that require customizable tools
• Day traders and swing traders interested in idea generation (especially if fundamental analysis plays a role)
• Traders who value simple, organized fundamental snapshots
• Traders and investors who check the market daily

MarketSmith is a great option for investors who enjoy doing their own research. This is not a tool for beginner investors. MarketSmith is packed with powerful tools, but you need to know how to use them properly if you want to make the most of your membership.

Both products offer trials, and we highly recommend taking the platforms for test drives to see if they are a good fit for you.

Alternatives to Leaderboard and Marketsmith

Leaderboard and MarketSmith cover a lot of ground, so they compete with a lot of other platforms we’ve reviewed. We’ll briefly cover some alternatives you might want to consider and why.

Alternatives to Leaderboard

Alternatives to Leaderboard include stock picking newsletters and research services that provide highly actionable top stock lists. Options include:

• Motley Fool Stock Advisor
• Zacks Premium
• Morningstar Premium

Alternatives to MarketSmith

Alternatives to MarketSmith are more diverse and offer different types of tools for trading and research.

• Seeking Alpha (in-depth fundamental research)
• Trade Ideas (real-time stock scanner)
• Trendspider (automated technical analysis)
• TradingView (dedicated charting platform)