RealClearMarkets (Opinion)
U.S. right-center, free-market oriented
Background
RealClearPolitics was co-founded in 2000 in Chicago by John McIntyre, an options trader, and Tom Bevan, an advertising account executive, originally as a political news aggregator. RealClearMarkets launched in 2007 as its economics and financial-markets sister site, focused on opinion, analysis, and aggregated commentary from a free-market perspective. Forbes Media acquired a 51% equity stake in RealClear Holdings in 2007, providing capital and broader distribution. In May 2015, Crest Media and Real Clear Investors bought out Forbes' stake, returning majority private ownership to the founders and their investor group. The network expanded to more than a dozen specialized news and opinion sites under the RealClear Media Group umbrella. In October 2025, Stagwell Inc., a publicly traded marketing and media company led by CEO Mark Penn, took a 35% minority stake in Real Clear Holdings. John Tamny, a free-market economist and author with affiliations at conservative-leaning institutions including the Federalist Society and the Heartland Institute, serves as the site's editor, giving RealClearMarkets a consistently supply-side, limited-government editorial voice. Media Bias/Fact Check rates the site right-center biased with mostly factual reporting, noting it sources from credible outlets but also from some mixed-reliability ones such as Fox News.
Sources
- RealClearMarkets – Bias and Credibility – Media Bias/Fact Check
- Stagwell Announces 35% Investment in RealClearPolitics – Stagwell
- Crest Media and Real Clear Investors Buy Remaining Stake in RealClearPolitics – PR Newswire
- RealClear Media Group – SourceWatch
- RealClearPolitics – Wikipedia
- John Tamny – Federalist Society Bio
- Trump's De-Reg Track Record Is Vy. Good – RealClearMarkets
- JD Vance Pushes Anti-Free Market Nonsense – RealClearMarkets
Profile compiled 2026-07-23; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.