MarketWatch.com sold its shares at $17 on a Thursday night in January 1999. By the close of trading on Friday they were worth $97.50, a gain of 474 percent. The site covered the stock market in real time for a new crowd of online traders. It was owned by CBS and Data Broadcasting Corporation, and its newsroom was run by Larry Kramer, a former executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner.

A Newsroom for Day Traders

Kramer's idea was a financial news site that updated all day, as markets moved. CBS lent its brand and its TV and radio reach, and Data Broadcasting supplied the market data. Editor-in-chief Thom Calandra and a staff of experienced reporters filled the front page at CBS.MarketWatch.com from the open to the close. The bet was that advertisers would follow the readers, and that the readers were people with money to invest.

Bubble Darling, Dow Jones Prize

Demand for the IPO was so strong that the price range rose twice before the deal priced at $17. Only theglobe.com had ever posted a bigger first-day gain. The stock fell back with the dot-com crash, but the site kept its readers. In 2004 MarketWatch merged with Pinnacor, and in early 2005 Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, bought the company. The site is still published today.

Cover: The Stock Exchange, Joseph Pennell. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a stock exchange (a newsroom watching the market).