This day in history: December 16, 2012: Investing.com domain purchased for $2.45 million. Bargain of the decade!

For the price of a relatively modest apartment in London, New York, Tel Aviv or Moscow, one of the least discussed and most absolutely sound investments that has been made in this entire industry over the last ten years took place on this day four years ago.

retail FX news and market events portal Investing.com has become one of the staple reads for many traders globally, its multi-lingual content having been instrumental to its growth and domination of the market news sector.

Several electronic trading news sites exist which provide market reports and analysis, as well as financial news and updates with regard to events that may affect the currency markets, however Investing.com is the largest in terms of global reach by a margin the size of the Hoover Dam.

Of course, this can be partially attributed to its truly international focus with several languages available, but one aspect that cannot go unnoticed is the domain name, which is highly valuable real estate.

In an example of how the famous Israeli mind can sometimes produce the work of absolute genius, ForexPros.com purchased the domain name Investing.com for just $2.45 million on December 16, 2012, which set the site on course to be the world’s most viewed financial markets portal.

At that time, this represented one of the 20 most expensive domain names ever purchased, however today that domain is worth several times its purchase price.

Two specific factors are responsible for its exponential appreciation in value, one being that domain names with absolute reference to their subject being the only part of their wording are now into the tens of millions in value, the other being that by positioning itself as Investing.com, the word Investing has become a household name and is intrinsically associated with the website from which it provides its service.

It is rather like suggesting that instead of looking up something on the internet via a search engine, pretty much the entire world now says “let’s Google it”. Having a single-word name that represents the exact category that it serves achieves the same ‘household name’ style end result in terms of the entity that it represents.

Now, the domain name is inseparable to the actual business with its engaged users and massive global audience, which combined are worth a fortune.

In September this year, FXCM purchased DailyFX, which is one of London’s most used economic calendars, for $40 million from IG Group, thus our guess is that Investing.com is now worth well over $100 million as a unified entity.

Once established as Investing.com, the site began to provide a complete and free resource for novice and semi-professional traders and investors, offering a wide range of real time quotes and charts, breaking news, financial tools, calendars and technical analysis.

Aside from information portals, domain names of significant value have since become a focus in the FX industry. In 2014, Japanese retail trading giant GMO Click Securities bought Z.com (the letter Z being a significant character in Japanese folklore).

The Japanese firm bought z.com, one of three of the only single-letter TLD codes on the internet from Nissan Motor, a company famed for its Z sports cars in the 1970s and 1980s, for $6.8 million.

As 2017 draws to a close, the mergers and acquisitions discussion is well and truly dominating the boardrooms of many retail FX and institutional providers, yet the massive value of domains such as Investing.com and its huge appreciation in value since this day just four years ago is a subject which is rarely a matter of thought.