It has now been more than 20 years since stock market magazines were booming.

In the first quarter of 2000, around one million copies of these magazines were sold, which mainly featured the hottest and latest stock tips.

But with the cooling euphoria on the stock market and the rise of the Internet, interest in them dwindled.

In the past quarter, the individual magazines achieved 10 to 30 percent of their peak circulation.

Martin Hock

Editor in business.

  • Follow I follow

The number of providers has also thinned out - and has now decreased again. Because Kulmbacher Börsenmedien AG, which among other things publishes the weekly investor magazine “Der Aktionär”, takes over the Munich finance publishing house. This means that the titles "Börse Online", "Euro" and "Euro am Sonntag" are being published by the not entirely undisputed publisher Bernd Förtsch.

He founded Börsenmedien AG in 1989 as a book publisher. The magazine “Bulle & Bär” was launched in 1994 and “Der Aktionär” in 1996, which merged in 1998. The publisher became known to a larger audience with Förtsch's appearance on the "3satBörse" show in 1999. Förtsch, who initially tried to score with small-cap stocks like Achterbahn AG or the Dutch broker van der Moolen, soon jumped successfully on the new one -Market train and earned the nickname “Mr. Dausend ”, when he predicted a price of 1000 euros for the share of the set-top box manufacturer Infomatec, which later went bankrupt.

Förtsch wasn't really happy with that. There were investigations by the financial regulator, searches of the business premises, not to mention the exorbitant abuse on the Internet that was customary in the past. With the combination of fund management, stock market journalism, investor television, direct banking and private investing, Förtsch has always suspected that it was not always taking it too seriously and that it was less his investors and readers who benefit from it than he himself never prosecuted, but was determined again and again. In contrast, two deputy editors-in-chief of “Aktionär” were sentenced to suspended sentences for market manipulation.

Nonetheless, Förtsch, who has rarely appeared in public since the hustle and bustle of the Neuer Markt, successfully built an empire. Manager Magazin listed him in October 2021 at number 265 on its traditional richest list with an estimated fortune of around 700 million euros.

So now three more investor stocks are going on in Förtschs Börsenmedien AG.

It had already taken over the online platform Finanztreff.de three years ago and will in future also operate boerse-online.de.

In the retail sale of print products, the share of Börsenmedien AG in the business title segment has risen from 27 to 49 percent - for stock market titles this share is likely to be much higher, so that there is practically no way around the Kulmbachers.

Whether this is an advantage for an opinion-driven subject such as share tips for private investors may be doubted.