Denny Hatch's Marketing Blog: #143 Chaikin Power Tool Widget

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2022/01/143-chaikin-power-tool-widget.html

#142 Blog Post – Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Posted by Denny Hatch

An Amazing Infomercial, a Wizard and His
Gizmo That Can Make You Obscenely Rich

Prediction 2021 Event: Marc Chaikin’s
Power Gauge Investment Opportunity

Just over a decade ago, the guy on the right — shaking hands with CNBC’s legendary Jim Cramer — bought the gargantuan double-house next door to us on sleepy, narrow Gaskill Street in center city Philly. His name is Marc Chaikin. He is a legendary investment guru and inventor of the Power Gauge—the most astonishing stock market analysis gizmo in the history of finance.

No kidding.

I ran into Marc at the annual holiday Gaskill Street block party in the summer 2021 and he told me that he and his gizmo were now in the hands of Bill Bonner’s Agora Publishing, a billion-dollar-a-year direct marketing, privately-held conglomerate in Baltimore. He was finally, at last! poised to make a gazillion dollars after ten years in the wilderness.

What Triggered this Blog Post:
A Textbook Brilliant Infomercial!

Marc and Sandy sold their big house and moved to New England. Below is the 7-word email from Gail—our incredibly savvy, eagle-eyed former neighbor across the street—about our former neighbors, Marc and Sandy Chaikin, who lived next door. Gail’s 7-word email:

“Marc Chaikin is alive and promoting himself.”

Gail included a link to Marc’s extraordinary infomercial selling his Gizmo.

You will have the link to Marc's textbook brilliant infomercial at the end of this post. (Note: I found myself hanging on every word.)

The Nightmare Revisited

One hot, hot Fourth of July many years ago at our Gaskill Street block party I found myself sitting next to the new neighbor, Marc Chaikin. We got talking about investing and — you guessed it — direct marketing. He started describing his invention — a gizmo/widget that could be installed on an iPhone or computer. It contained detailed data on the stock market. Updated continuously, it synthesized dozens of metrics for 5,000 stocks and could tell you in an instant whether to BUY, HOLD or SELL with unerring accuracy:

That day Marc set me up with his Power Gauge widget on my Apple computer. I started playing with it. Peggy and I have turned over our modest portfolio to Fidelity and are happy. But I was dazzled by this extraordinary invention.

Marc was in the process of putting together a small company to market his Power Gauge to investors. On that Independence Day picnic I said: “Marc, I can make you very rich.”

After a few more conversations about direct marketing, Marc hired me as a consultant/copywriter for $1,000 a month. As I recall he gave me a wee piece of the action if the thing flew.

A Kooky Business Model

My memory is a bit fuzzy here, but as I recall Marc had assembled a small gaggle of options brokers, traders and advisors. They had convinced him that he had come up with a neat-o lead-generation gimmick for traders to land customers and make big bucks on commissions. The deal: give away the Power Gauge free to options investors. When an investor placed a trade through the optionsXpress platform Marc’s little company would get a nice commission. As I recall, it was a one-time commission; not a commission on every trade.

The Obvious Business Model

Not one to mince words, I told Marc I had never heard of a deal like this.

I immediately saw the Power Gauge as a potential gold mine and the foundation of a fantastic investor’s advisory service. Alas options traders are the wrong people. This gizmo is for serious, long-term stock market investors. Options guys are get-rich-quick day traders. They are not investors; they are crap shooters—gamblers. They love hot action, day trading and the rush of quick profits.

I remembered the immortal words of professional gambler Nick Dandolos—a.k.a. Nick the Greek. (He died Christmas Day, 1966). The Greek reportedly proclaimed: “The greatest thrill is winning. The second greatest thrill is losing.”

My Pitch to Marc

“Don’t give this gem away free!” I urged. Yeah, give it away as a free trial for a week or two. During the trial period, blitz the responders with emails about what the gizmo is saying and how much money investors were making from it. Then convert them to becoming paid subscribers to the Power Gauge. Once in the fold, go for the jugular. Upsell the users to a pricy email newsletter that tipped them off to the hottest stocks to buy and the money-losing bummers to short.

Anybody out there remember Rod Smart of
The short-lived (2001) XFL Football League
Whose nickname was, "HE HATE ME"?

The options guys that Marc had assembled hated me. I hated them. Yeah, I wrote the copy that Marc and his guys ordered me to write, but I was miserable. The business model was going nowhere and I knew it. My arrangement with Marc lasted a couple of months. Then one day a member of Marc’s team called me up and started screaming at me over the phone. Peggy and I talked and we decided that since Marc and Sandy lived next door it was not a good idea to get into a fight with neighbors. What’s more, I was spending too damn much time on Marc’s project for the grand a month he was paying me.

I fired Marc.

Looking Back in Hindsight…

At the time, I was a freelancer with a 50-year career in direct marketing. When I signed on with Marc and he explained the cockamamie business model, I smelled a rat. As founder of WHO’S MAILING WHAT! and, later, editor and publisher (with Peggy) of Target Marketing magazine, I traveled the country attending and exhibiting at myriad expos, conferences and local gatherings selling ads and interviewing top direct marketers for cover stories. I knew the business. Above all, I knew cold the arithmetic of continuity series and subscription services many of whom had been early employers of mine as well as clients.

It seemed to me these guys Marc had assembled had figured out how to co-opt the Power Gauge—a work of authentic genius—to be used as a common lead generator.

To Marc’s mini-consortium I was the arch-enemy—a pain-in-the-ass little jerkwater copywriter in the sad-sack shack next door who knew nothing about the inner workings of Wall Street and was trying to upset their gravy train to juicy commissions from options traders.

Over the Next 10 Years…

We never became close friends of Marc and Sandy. Periodically we would bump into each other on the street or at summer block parties and I would ask him how he was doing with the gizmo. He would regale me with the names of all the important people who loved it and all the great connections he was making. But I gathered the business did not take off.

Then in the summer of ‘21 he told me he was in business with Bill Bonner’s billion-dollar Agora Marketing, publisher of 300 books and 120 newsletters with 205,524 active subscribers. It was a yummy (and long overdue) association.

Bill Bonner in front of his French Chateau d'Ouzilly—
down the road from David Ogilvy's Chateau dte Touffou.
"I never understood why copywriters feel the need to own
French chateaux," Bonner once said to me.

I knew Bill Bonner fairly well. I wrote a cover story on him for Target Marketing. His sister-in-law was a dear friend of my parents in upstate New York.

I burrowed deep into my files and came up with a fascinating exchange of memos where I tried to introduce Bill Bonner to the fledgling direct marketers, Marc and Sandy Chaikin.

Ten years later, it turns out I was right.

Sigh…

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

To: William Bonner

From: Denny Hatch

Date: March 10, 2011

Subject: Breakthrough New Stock Rating System and iPhone App—Free to Your Subscribers

Dear Bill,

Had a catch-up lunch with Beth Ketzner and Kathleen Peddicord last month here in Philly. All very upbeat and great fun.

I don’t think you and I have spoken since you were the 1997 Target Marketing magazine Direct Marketer of the Year and I came to Baltimore to interview you for the cover story.

I am currently working with Marc Chaikin, who is well-known in the financial world and regular columnist for SeekingAlpha.com.

I think you’ll find his new Chaikin Power Gauge Reports and iPhone App to be breakthrough achievements as stock research tools.

You can read this e-mail or cut to the chase and go directly to [Marc Chaikin's link].

What makes the Chaikin Power Gauge unique:

• It distills masses of complex data on each stock into clear and concise actionable color displays.

• Green is bullish-positive – BUY NOW.

• Red is bearish-negative — SELL (or maybe Sell Short)

• Yellow is neutral — HOLD.

• With the Power Gauge it’s possible to make a buy-sell-hold decision literally in seconds.

Not only are the red-green-yellow displays based on impartial, third-party research into more than 5,000 stocks—all updated daily—but also the system has been independently back-tested over a 10-year period with complete success.

Investors that want detailed analysis beyond the green-red-yellow indicators can enter an e-mail address and the ticker symbol of any stock and click on “SEND MY REPORT.”

By return e-mail comes the 4-page pdf Chaikin Power Gauge Report.

With the new iPhone App (released yesterday), all this research is not only available, but also iPhone users can trade 24/7 anywhere on the planet. In Marc Chaikin’s words, “It’s like having broker in your pocket.”

[I included the iPhone App link.]

The entire system is currently free.

No cost. No risk. No obligation.

Once you’ve tried it, you might like to pass it on to your readers.

Here’s a fascinating test:

1. Take a moment to visit

[Marc Chaikin's Blog]

2. Pick a stock symbol and get a Free pdf 4-page Power Gauge Report by return e-mail.

3. Then enter the same ticker symbol into Google Finance, MSN Money and/or Yahoo Finance.

See for yourself which one solves the information overload problem by providing quick and easy decision-making tools.

I think you will agree the Chaikin Power Gauge Report wins hands down!

If you would like to offer it to your readership, Marc Chaikin is available at:

[I supplied Marc's contact information.]

Thank you, Bill.

I hope all is well.

Denny Hatch

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

From: WilliamRBonner@xxx.com

Subject: Re: Breakthrough New York Stock Rating System and iPhone App—Free to your subscribers.

To: dennyhatch@yahoo.com

Date: Friday, March 25, 2011, 2:08 PM

Denny,

Yes, it's been a while. Beth tells me you've been busy.

Chaikin's product is interesting...how does he make any money?

Bill

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

To: William Bonner

From: Denny Hatch

Date: March 27, 2011

Dear Bill,

Thank you for getting back to me about the new Chaikin Power Tools Research Reports system and iPhone App.

This is in response to your 6-word question: “How does he make any money?”

Two years in development and several months in beta testing, this is in the early stages of the product launch.

By way of background Marc Chaikin’s team includes Wharton grad students, the past Head of Marketing for Reuters America, a Gartner analyst and a veritable cadre of smart staffers from twenty-somethings to septuagenarians.

These guys are working at the intersection of two well documented trends: (1) online financial services are migrating to primarily mobile access at unprecedented rates and (2) massive flows of assets are moving out of traditional brokerage accounts and into self-directed accounts.

After investigating everything from paid apps to "freemiums" to advertising-supported, they've settled on a blended business model to commercialize their service.

At this time, the iPhone app is free to download. This is based on analyses of how rapidly initial interest and downloads drop off for paid apps.

Consistent with other mobile services, they've negotiated with their brokerage partner, optionsXpress, to receive revenue for their users who open new accounts.

OptionsXpress is the primary revenue stream that they are pursuing. They expect to prove that not only do their clients open new accounts but also trade frequently, and so repeat this model with other online brokers in the near future allowing a variety of online brokerage clients to transact right in the app.

Incidentally, it was reported this week that Charles Schwab will be acquiring optionsXpress:

Charles Schwab's $1 billion offer last week for midsize optionsXpress seems like a good move for the online-brokerage giant. The all-stock deal should allow Schwab to update the options tools on its Website and to integrate futures trading, helping it stay relevant in a very competitive technology race. The firm is choosing to buy the technology rather than build it, and also gets the chance to absorb optionsXpress' nearly 400,000 accounts.

—Theresa W. Carey
Barron’s, Saturday, March 26, 2011

This should be a very positive development in the dynamics of the launch and the future of Chaikin Power Tools.

Right now, the focus is building traction and creating evangelists with their brokerage partner revenue model.

In addition to the above they are also pursuing development and testing of other revenue streams:

• Building advertising support into their apps.

• Monthly subscription for an "ad free" version.

• A paid real time product for the active trader community with real time data and trading analytics.

• Turn the research reports—now entirely free—into a subscription product.

• A plan to offer their application and a module to be integrated with a traditional broker's desktop workflow to full-service brokers in a traditional enterprise software-licensing model.

Meanwhile, Marc Chaikin is stoking the fires with his weekly column in SeekingAlpha.com and will be making the rounds of the cable financial shows. The schedule so far:

March 31 — Fox Business, Varney & Co. with Stuart Varney

April 12 — CNBC Worldwide Exchange (“CNBC networks' most distributed show, simultaneously available in more than 100 countries across the globe.”)

This week, the Chaikin Power Tools iPhone App was featured as the leading financial app in the iTunes Store.

Initial user reviews are real good. Below is a sampling:

“A FREE IPHONE APP called Chaikin Power Tools was just launched. It provides trading signals on approximately 5,000 stocks. The app lets you set up your own watch list or select from a built-in industry list. If you pick, for example, conglomerates, you'll see recent prices (20 minutes delayed) for the companies in the group, plus a proprietary Power Gauge, which gives you a bullish (green), bearish (red) or neutral (yellow) signal. Clicking on a gauge provides additional detail, plus the ability to view a graph and see some basic information about the company. It's free, and it's fun. Check it out.”

—Theresa W. Carey
Barron’s, Saturday, March 26, 2011

Chaikin Power Tools (iPhone, iPad) FREE

“Stock market savvy app owners will have a good time with Chaikin Power Tools, an app filled with analytical tools to monitor the market and making smart moves. The app was designed by market expert Marc Chaikin and it works through more than 20 different factors of information to help make buying and selling decisions.

“The app also keeps track of outside information that can help you make decisions about stocks. You can monitor breaking news that might affect the market, and even keep up on high activity on Twitter regarding a certain stock. And you can make your trades right from the app using optionsXpress.”

— GetLatestNewsUpdates.Blogspot.com
March 25, 2011

Bill, etched in my brain is an exchange we had over lunch in 1997 about the (then nascent) Internet that nobody really understood except perhaps Jeff Bezos and yourself. I muttered something about the business models that were built on “attracting eyeballs” as being nuts.

“The only bank that takes eyeballs,” you shot back, “is the eye bank.”

Marc Chaikin ain’t in the eyeballs business!

Finally, a scenario:

A couple of financial guys are having lunch at the Bar Vendôme and one guy mentions a hot stock. After lunch the other guy goes on his iPhone to the Power Gauge on the Chaikin App. The colors are green—bullish-buy. Just to be sure he requests the 4-page Power Gauge Report on the stock and it arrives as a pdf by return e-mail. Everything looks good and he trades in his account, which is confirmed shortly after the market opens.

Conversely, if his luncheon partner identified some bad news about a stock that was in the guy’s portfolio, he could sell on the spot and be out before it started to really tank.

In short, with the Chaikin Power Tools App, an investor has instant hands-on control of his portfolio 24/7 anywhere in the world. Isn’t this 21st century personal financial management at its most elegant?

Incidentally, Marc would be happy to jump on a train to give you more details in person on his Chaikin Power Tools—or, if you are so inclined, we’d love to see you in Philly for lunch at the Union League. He is:

[I supplied Marc's address, phone and email.]

Thank you again for following up. Hope this is helpful.

Denny Hatch

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Zero reply from Bill. He blew me off.

Now, 10 years later, Bonner and Chaikin have themselves a joint venture and a riveting one-hour-plus infomercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1F0p3ASDeE

Takeaways to Consider

• Maybe if I’d hung in there and got Chaikin and Bonner seriously talking to each other I mighta wound up richer than Croesus.

• I love Bonner. But hated the guys Chaikin had assembled.

• Life’s too damn short to spend in perpetual misery, fear, angst and anger hoping for a big payout in an uncertain future.

• Here’s Marc's Current Offer from Agora Marketing.