ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ---September 26, 2007 – – CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, and Investools Inc. (NASDAQ: SWIM), a leading provider of online brokerage and investor education services, today announced an agreement in which CNBC will integrate CNBC Plus live video streaming into Investools' industry leading and award winning thinkorswim brokerage platform beginning September 29, 2007. CNBC Plus video-on-demand service will be available on thinkorswim later this year.
Thinkorswim is the first retail brokerage licensee of CNBC Plus's commercial-free streaming video content and video-on-demand. Thinkorswim will allow self-directed investors worldwide to view CNBC's content for real-time, actionable news and analysis, while trading on a single screen and without additional cost to the thinkorswim customer.
Under the terms of the agreement, thinkorswim will integrate CNBC's live video stream and searchable ticker-based video directly into the thinkorswim platform, giving customers access to CNBC television while they search and execute trades online. Having CNBC Plus fully integrated into thinkorswin's trading platform will provide its customers with greater market insight and a trading edge.
"CNBC provides business news that is fast, accurate, actionable and unbiased on air and online," said Mark Hoffman, President, CNBC. "With this agreement, CNBC equips thinkorswim customers with breaking financial news, market insight, and in-depth analysis, enabling them to make more educated trades."
"Investools is excited to be the exclusive retail launch partner of CNBC and to bring the highest quality global business video news feed to our clients," said Lee K. Barba, Investools' Chairman and CEO. "We are passionate in pushing powerful technology to self-directed traders and now all thinkorswim users will have streaming commercial-free and cost-free CNBC live and searchable video-on-demand archives, directly on their thinkorswim software-based trading platform."
The CNBC Plus video-on-demand archive currently includes 48,000 video segments with 150 new clips added each weekday from the CNBC networks: CNBC, CNBC Asia, CNBC Europe and CNBC World. Advanced search functions allow users to view videos according to ticker, CEO, analyst, sector, region, program, date, and time.
For more information on the new CNBC Plus offering visit: http://media.cnbc.com/i/CNBC/CNBC_Images/PR/cnbcScreenshot.jpg
About Investools (NASDAQ: SWIM)
Investools Inc. offers market-leading investor education and brokerage and related financial products and services for self-directed investors. Investools Education Group offers a full range of investor education products and services that provide lifelong learning in a variety of interactive delivery formats, including instructor-led synchronous and asynchronous online courses, in-person workshops, one-on-one and one-to-many online coaching programs and telephone, live-chat and email support. Thinkorswim Inc., Investools' financial technology pioneer and industry-leading online brokerage firm, is focused on providing services to self-directed options traders and active traders. thinkorswim offers customers a broad range of products including equity securities, fixed income, index products, options, futures, other derivatives and foreign exchange. thinkorswim provides unique front end trading platforms that allow its customers to trade electronically and provides sophisticated trading tools and analytics, including tools for implementing complex, multi-leg options strategies. The products and services offered by Investools Inc. have received numerous accolades from third parties including thinkorswim's ranking by Barron's as its top rated software-based online broker and best for options traders (2006 & 2007), and Prophet's top Barron's ranking for best technical analysis tools (2006).
Investor Contact:
Ida Kane, SVP and CFO
801.816.6918
ida.kane@investools.com
Media Contact:
Fran Del Valle
212.717.5499
frances.delvalle@influencecentral.com
About CNBC:
CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news, providing real-time financial market coverage and business information to more than 340 million homes worldwide, including more than 95 million households in the United States and Canada. The network's Business Day programming (weekdays from 5:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and also includes reports from CNBC news bureaus worldwide. Additionally, CNBC viewers can manage their individual investment portfolios and gain additional in-depth information from on-air reports by accessing http://www.cnbc.com.
Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBC Universal Media Village Web site at http://nbcumv.com/cnbc/.