How Joe built the fortune
Ricketts made his money by betting early on cheap trading for ordinary investors. In May 1975 regulators ended fixed brokerage commissions in the United States, and that same year he and partners opened First Omaha Securities in Nebraska, offering stock trades at a fraction of the fees charged by full-service firms. The business grew steadily through the 1980s by keeping costs low and adding services such as touch-tone telephone trading.
The company, renamed Ameritrade, was quick to move online in the 1990s and went public in 1997, giving the Ricketts family a large listed stake. In 2006 Ameritrade acquired TD Waterhouse from Toronto-Dominion Bank, creating TD Ameritrade, one of the biggest retail brokers in the country. The family held a significant share of the combined company for years and sold stock over time.
When Charles Schwab bought TD Ameritrade in an all-stock deal completed in 2020, the family's remaining holding turned into Schwab shares. Proceeds from the brokerage also funded the family's purchase of the Chicago Cubs in 2009.
Low cost brokerage proved to be a durable business model. As trading moved from phone calls to websites and then to mobile apps, firms with large customer bases and efficient systems gained the most, and Ameritrade was among the leaders in winning self directed investors. Interest earned on customer cash balances became an important source of profit alongside commissions.
Companies and holdings
Ventures linked to Ricketts include:
- TD Ameritrade, the brokerage he founded as First Omaha Securities in 1975
- Chicago Cubs, bought by a family trust from the Tribune Company in 2009, with his son Tom as chairman
- DNAinfo, a local news site he started in New York in 2009, later joined by Gothamist
- Straight Arrow News, a digital news outlet he launched in 2021
- High Plains Bison, a bison meat business tied to his ranching interests in Wyoming
He shut down DNAinfo and Gothamist in 2017, shortly after newsroom staff in New York voted to unionize, a decision that drew heavy criticism. The Cubs ended a long championship drought by winning the World Series in 2016.
The family's stake in the Cubs also covered Wrigley Field, the ballpark opened in 1914, and a share of a regional sports network. Under the Ricketts family the club renovated the stadium and developed hotels, offices and a public plaza on surrounding land.
Early life and career
John Joe Ricketts was born in July 1941 in Nebraska City, Nebraska, one of several children in a family of modest means. He paid his own way through Creighton University in Omaha, taking time out along the way, and graduated with a degree in economics in 1968.
After college he worked in finance, including a stint as a broker at Dean Witter, where he saw how much investors paid in commissions. That experience shaped the idea behind his own firm. He served as chief executive of Ameritrade until 2001 and remained chairman for several more years before stepping away from the board.
In the years after he left the brokerage, Ricketts moved to Wyoming, where he bought ranch land and raised bison. He has written about his business career in a memoir published in 2019, describing the early struggles of the firm and the risks he took when it was small. The book also explains how he and his wife Marlene raised their four children in Omaha while the company was growing.
Philanthropy and public life
Ricketts has given to education and conservation causes. He founded the Opportunity Education Foundation, which has supported schooling projects in Tanzania and in the United States, and he has funded land conservation efforts connected to his Wyoming ranches.
He has been an active donor in conservative politics, founding the super PAC Ending Spending and contributing to Republican candidates. In 2019 he faced criticism after the publication of offensive emails he had forwarded, for which he apologized. His son Pete Ricketts served two terms as governor of Nebraska and was appointed to the US Senate in 2023, and other family members are involved in politics and in running the Cubs.