CLIFF WACHTEL, CPA, MBA:

WORK SAMPLES Metrics, Reader Feedback & References, Writing

Samples

Cliff Wachtel, CPA (US) MBA Cliffw41598@yahoo.com

Abstract Here’s what I do better than most: communication. Persuasion (including sales and marcom of all

kinds), explaining the complex (like training or providing clear analysis of a complex topic). Comfort with financial documents helps too.

Contents 1. METRICS ................................................................................................................................................ 2

Sample Page View Statistics From Seeking Alpha ....................................................................................... 5

2. COMMENTS/READER FEEDBACK ............................................................................................................ 9

3. WRITING SAMPLES - ONLINE ................................................................................................................ 12

Background .............................................................................................................................................. 12

Samples - Market Outlook: Focused On Drivers Of Most Global Markets, Both Overviews And Special

Reports .................................................................................................................................................... 12

Market Outlook – Special Reports .......................................................................................................... 13

Sample - Dividend Investing ..................................................................................................................... 13

Sample - Commodities ............................................................................................................................. 13

Sample - Forex & Related ......................................................................................................................... 13

Sample - Investor Education & Training.................................................................................................. 14

1. Double Bollinger Bands (DBBs) Explained | FXAcademy.com ......................................... 14

2. Double Bollinger Bands Strategy To Trade Forex .............................................................. 14

3. Using Bollinger Band® "Bands" To Gauge Trends ............................................................. 14

4. How To Apply Bollinger Bands® With Metatrader 4: Using ... .......................................... 14

6. 4 Rules For Using Double Bollinger® Bands, The Most ... ................................................ 14

7. 4 Rules For Using Double Bollinger Bands®, The Most ... ................................................ 15

WRITING SAMPLES – OFFLINE OLD MEDIA ................................................................................................... 15

You can skim all of the below in about 5 minutes. It only looks long because of the images.

There are three sections, for three kinds of work samples. I usually used metrics, comments, and

samples from my posts on seeking alpha (though I’ve been a regular contributor on forexfactory.com,

fxstreet.com, businessinsider.com, and many others) because they provide the clearest readership data,

and more active comment streams, with clearer formatting.

METRICS: Hard figures on page views and my author rankings on page 1 on seekingalpha.com. The key

point of this is that I’m a proven audience builder who can help quickly establish you as a leading

authority via content and social media campaigns.

READER FEEDBACK/REFERENCES/TESTIMONIALS: Sample reader comments on page 8. You could find

similar feedback and testimonials by just seeing article comment streams, however this sampling will

save you some time. See if these are the kinds of responses you’d want on the path to becoming a

leading authority with a loyal, growing following.

WRITING SAMPLES: A variety of writing samples on page 11, on most of the investing topics I’ve covered

over the years. No need to read all. Gave you enough to choose what might be of interest.

Due to technical issues with the archived material, formatting is unavoidably a bit inconsistent.

Feel free to call if you’ve any questions.

Regards, Cliff

1. METRICS The key point of this section is that I was a top ranking (most read and followed) writer in multiple

topics: dividend investing, forex, and market outlook. So please have no concerns that I’ll get up to

speed fast with topics relevant to your needs. Anyone can study and learn a given investment topic. The

hard part is to find someone who knows how to attract and build and audience. That takes a lot more

than quality writing or SEO. Many facets and details to doing that successfully and relatively quickly.

I mostly refer to seeking alpha statistics because they were the only site that had author rankings so

readily available and clearly presented. I had similar results on forexfactory.com (one of very largest

forex sites) and businessinsider.com, among others, based on available page view data at the time,

which I can dig up if needed.

I began contributing to seeking alpha in May 2009 (seekingalpha.com, world’s largest financial blog

aggregator, ranked among top 10 most valuable blogs per Business Insider), with the goal of building up

a presence as a financial writer. I studied the site to understand what types of articles might be popular

and built a strategy to climb the rankings. It worked. Learned many lessons about what it REALLY takes

to grow an audience.

On Monday January 4, 2010 was 6th most followed writer out of the top 500 ranked, and about 3000

contributors, most financial professionals, money managers.

10 jan 04

Rankings changed daily, but I remained in the top 15 or so from then onwards until Seeking Alpha later

abandoned overall rankings, and instead ranked authors by the number of page views in a given topic.

In 2011 I was mostly writing about forex and related topics (as opposed to topics chosen for maximum

page views). I did well in that too, usually ranking among the top 5 in one or more categories, as shown

below. I was Chief Analyst for an online broker (avatrade.com) and part of my job was to get published

(with my job title and company name) in order to build our branding.

15 apr 06 1951

Top 5 Forex Opinion Leaders

Marc Chandler 32,552 pageviews (of Brown Brothers, Harriman).

Cliff Wachtel 23,680 pageviews after missing a week of no publications

Daily Trading 23,201 pageviews

Jeb Handwerger 18,197 pageviews

Andrew Wilkinson 15,670 pageviews

…and remained so ranked until I stopped writing around September 2014.

02 Sep. 16 10.18

Sample Page View Statistics From Seeking Alpha

Total page views March 2012 to beginning of February 2013.

Total page views November1, 2012 to October 1, 2013.

01 oct 1003

78k+ in Jan, 55k Feb,70k March 2013.

There’s an interesting lesson behind the above, on the value of one good series of articles, the 2013

Outlok

04 feb 1432

As I moved into more Market Outlook as well as forex, I ranked well in that category too, albeit with a

bit of a drop in the forex rankings as I was a bit less focused on it. The below table as of February 14,

2013.

Ranking CATEGORY YOUR PVs PVs TO NEXT HIGHER RANK

6th Market Outlook 113,578 5,878

6th Forex 11,873 83

68th Economy 4,658 20

98th Gold & Precious Metals 3,084 19

As of December 2012, 4th in Market Outlook, remained within top 5-10 in forex and market outlook until

I stopped writing in the latter part of 2014.

01 DEC 23 1652

2. COMMENTS/READER FEEDBACK

You could just pick some of the above articles and look at the comments, looking at these will save you

time.The point is that there are a lot of really good ones and you’d find plenty more like them in the

comments streams of the articles. Worth a quick look.

----

Here’s a sample comment I’d get about my work overall via Seeking Alpha’s messaging function that

allowed readers to contact authors.

December 30 2012 FANMAIL ON MESSAGE BOARD FROM MESSAGE ON SA FROM 121230

Dear Mr. Watchel, Simply to tell you that I have not encountered a clearer, down to earth, intelligent and investor/trader friendliest view other than yours. I am currently trading futures and about to strat options (traditional and binary, weekly etc) and If I get into Forex this 2013 I cannot think of any better channel than the one you represent. receive my best wishes for 2013. Sincerely, Antonio Lopez Portillo ----

In response to this article:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/922201-coming-week-market-movers-earnings-economic-realities-overriding-stimulus-optimism This comment

01 OCT 15 1605

02 OCT 15 1605 ----

http://seekingalpha.com/user/170389/comment/417604 The High Dividend Stock Investor's Collapsing Dollar Survival Guide, Part 3 [View article] (Note: Refers

to same article as in Dividend Investing section below.) This via email from Philip D.Roos: I wish that I could "grade" the articles. Cliff Wachtel's three-part-er would get an A triple + (collegiate) or 5 stars (conventional zero through 5 stars) or 4 bulls (unconventional nine-point scale from 4 bulls through zero to 4 bears). His contribution is so far above the average as to be at the 99.999th percentile!

-----

In response to the article on gold in the Commodities section below.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/594481-a-classic-misunderstanding-of-gold-the-correction-and-solution?v=1337278762&source=tracking_notify

****FyiadvisorComments (19)

Cliff

Absolutely a brilliant article, thumbs up. Finally someone who truly gets it.

-----

In response to this article:

How to Use Forex and Oil Trends to Predict Market Direction

These comments

pslater

Comments (79)| + Follow| Send Message

Cliff, this is one of the best, most useful articles EVER on SA. Thank you so much for

sharing your knowledge. Intermarket analysis IS where it’s at....

27 Jan 2010, 08:28 PM Reply! Report Abuse | Make Author's PickLike1

Binary Options Comments (15)| + Follow| Send Message

Binary Options

This is excellent stuff...may try to incorporate some of your thoughts in my binary

trading, seems like it would be a perfect fit for very short term trading. Thanks.

mbkelly75 Comments (4545)| + Follow| Send Message

mbkelly75

Well done and clearly written with a method that can be easily used. Thank you very

much - I have been wondering about this - but had not put it together yet. Please keep

up the good work.

BUZZER Comments (23066)| + Follow| Send Message

Excellent example of making a case for simplicity with convincingly rational

observations.

Note: See the amazon page for my book (see below in writing samples section) for reader reviews.

3. WRITING SAMPLES - ONLINE

Background In order to focus on my realty company, Wachtel Properties 2, LLC, I stopped writing in mid-2014, and

I’d been cutting back for months before that. The metrics and articles are from when I was a full time

financial writer and content-driven marketing campaigner.

In addition to glancing at the articles, consider skimming their comment stream. While I provide a

separate sample of those below (worth a look), these present a comment stream that is both unfiltered

and shows how I interact with my online community.

The articles come from seekingalpha.com because they were most easily accessed there, and had

metrics and comments stream displayed more clearly than other sites. Most of them also appeared on

many other leading sites, like businessinsider.com, forexfactory.com, econintersect.com, and many

lesser sites, with or without my permission, in about 12 different languages besides English.

You can safely assume that total page views from all sites were at least 30% higher than figures

displayed from seekingalpha.com, the only site to offer extensive page view statistics.

Formats and exact metrics vary with that of the source from which they were copy/pasted.

If you want more, you can find over 600 of them here, and also by just searching my name on the other

leading websites like forexfactory.com, businessinsider.com, econintersect.com.

I’ve omitted samples of newsletters and daily market outlook presentations for which I don’t have page

view statistics.

Samples - Market Outlook: Focused On Drivers Of Most Global

Markets, Both Overviews And Special Reports A few of the below articles were a combination of both overall market outlook for risk assets such as

equities, and stock or sector specific pieces.

PAGE VIEWS AS OF

5/13

ARTICLE NAME

22,305 High Yield MLPs And mREITs Flashing Warning, Danger And Opportunity

19,036 Virtually All 2013 Outlooks Summarized: Part 4 - Conclusions, Actions ( The whole series got ~80k page views,

see the article for links to these)

14,822 Annaly Capital - Bargain Or Falling Knife? Questions You Must Ask

12,946 7 Reasons Markets Are Overbought, And What To Do

12,812 The Coming Week: 11 Things You Must Watch

Market Outlook – Special Reports # COMMENTS PAGE VIEWS

4 Reasons Why the Goldman Sachs Fraud Scandal Is So Dan... 276 40,970

Charles Nenner's Trends and Trades: Investor's Roadmap ... 64 36,054

Sample - Dividend Investing The High Dividend Stock Investor's Collapsing Dollar Survival Guide, Part 3 Editors' Pick • Mar. 5, 2009 • SDS, SKF, QID • 22 Comments

1. see also above article on Annaly Capital

2. See the below Comments section below for sample reader response.

Sample - Commodities

3,221 A Classic Misunderstanding Of Gold, The Correction And Solution

See the below Comments section for sample reader comments on this one.

Sample - Forex & Related Coming 2014 Explosion: EU Money Supply Or EU Itself? Jan. 5, 2014 • DIA, SPY, QQQ • 11 Comments

Predicted EU’s eventual QE a year early.

What Everyone Must Know About The U.S. Dollar: Sea Change Coming? on Sun, Mar 10 • UUP • 31 Comments

EUR/USD Weekly Outlook: The 6 Top Price Drivers on Sun, Mar 17 • FXE, UUP • 5 Comments

7 Charts Tell Why We All Need Currency Diversification Editors' Pick • Jul. 25, 2012 • FXA, FXB, FXC • 9 Comments

Sample - Investor Education & Training If you search “double Bollinger bands” on Google, the #1 result is a video course based on a script I

wrote, based on my book. A multi-part article I wrote on the same topic ranks #6 and #7. For many years

the original version was #1. Similar searches (like double Bollinger bands strategy) yield similar results.

1. Double Bollinger Bands (DBBs) Explained | FXAcademy.com www.fxacademy.com/learn/trading-with-double-bollinger-bands

o

Our course on Double Bollinger Bands (DBB's) is divided into several lessons. DBBs are a powerful variation on the standard single Bollinger Band, because ... You visited this page.

2. Double Bollinger Bands Strategy To Trade Forex

www.fxkeys.com › Trading Systems

o

Oct 25, 2014 - This system which is called “Double Bollinger Bands Trading Strategy”, is even simpler than the system that Chris

follows, because although ... 3. Using Bollinger Band® "Bands" To Gauge Trends

www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/05/022205.asp

Many traders use Bollinger Bands® to determine overbought and oversold levels, selling when price touches the upper Bollinger

Band® and buying when it hits ... 4. How To Apply Bollinger Bands® With Metatrader 4: Using ...

www.investopedia.com/...bollinger-bands...4/using-bollinger-bands.asp

In the "Navigator" window, click to open the Indicator list, and find Bollinger Bands®, as shown in Figure 4. Double-click Bollinger

Bands®, right-click and select ...

5. Images for double bollinger bandsReport images

6. 4 Rules For Using Double Bollinger® Bands, The Most ... www.fxempire.com/.../4-rules-for-using-double-bollinger-bands-the-mo...

Mar 27, 2014 - Part 3: A Brief Summary . For Details See Part 1: Introduction ToDouble Bollinger Bands, Part 2: A Continuation That Presents Specific Rules ...

7. 4 Rules For Using Double Bollinger Bands®, The Most ... www.fxempire.com/.../4-rules-for-using-double-bollinger-bands-the-mo... Mar 19, 2014 - Part 1 Is An Introduction To Double Bollinger Bands, Part 2 Is A Continuation That Presents Specific Rules And Examples, Part 3 (coming soon) ...

WRITING SAMPLES – OFFLINE OLD MEDIA These are relevant to you because they add credibility, which can open some doors when running a

content driven audience acquisition campaign, social media campaign, and the like.

The Sensible Guide to Forex: Safer, Smarter Ways to Survive and Prosper from the Start by Cliff

Wachtel (Wiley 2012).

The above link is to the book’s amazon page, includes book samples, customer and professional reviews.

It won FXStreet.com’s Best Forex Book Award (click on this link and scroll down to item #9) to see.

It serves as the basis for 2 online video courses on forex trading, the best being from FXAcademy:

http://www.fxacademy.com/.

Whenever I’ve got time to promote the book, it places within amazon’s top 10-20 forex books. When

being really aggressive, I’ve gotten it as high as #2, despite its being one of the top 3 most expensive

forex books among the top 20 best sellers.

02 01 0917

Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9

customer reviews)

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,170 in Books (See Top 100 in

Books)

o #2 in Books > Business & Investing > International > Foreign Exchange

o #86 in Books > Business & Investing > Finance

Super Sectors: How to Outsmart the Market Using Sector Rotation and ETFs by John Nyaradi (Wiley

2010)

Wrote a ~6 page contribution in Chapter 20: Ask the Experts: Insights and Advice from Today’s Top

Investors, Traders, and Managers. You can find at least some of it via the above link, using the “Look

Inside” feature. He found me via Seeking Alpha, back when I was among its top 10 most popular

contributors (see metrics section).