Sam Seiden's supply and demand - Does it work?

I've just finished watching ALL of Sam Seidens videos on fxstreet.com and I'm currently demo testing his strategy.

I was wondering if there is anyone out there who is making CONSISTENT profits with his S&D method??

I know it's popular and he has a lot of die hard fans (I could almost categorize myself as one too) but I'm yet to come across anyone making money from it week in week out.

Please convince me otherwise

Hi nomadic123, I am one of those people who trained with Sam Seiden and OTA and I use supply and demand in all my trading, forex, futures, shares and commodities. It took me a while to get consistently profitable, but have been for the last 2-3 years now using it. I won't say it is easy, it sounds simple, but it is a very subtle way of trading. Once you get the hang of it, you will find it invaluable. One of the aha moments I had with it was not to go for the obvious levels (mainly pivot highs and lows) but find the not so obvious ones. If it is going with the trend that tends to be the level formed as a rally base rally just above the pivot low. If it is a turning trend point then to go one level higher than a pivot high (price is normally exhausted by then and lots of stops get triggered). The way I gained a lot of experience in a short space of time was to back test it. Then I really started to see it in action for myself and it gave me lots of confidence. Are you applying the odds enhancers to evaluate the levels also? Perhaps you could post a chart on the eur/usd with the levels you have identified - and I could take a look, or maybe just put a couple of levels in a reply? Hope that is of some use.

SS use SD zones instead pivot high and low which would be SR.

absolutely agree Mima - it is a fine distinction and the basis of a great trading plan - did you learn with SS too?

Qillh, thanks for replying the thread. This topic is something which interested me too.
Qillh, could you show us with chart what do you mean by :
- find the not so obvious level,
- If it is going with the trend, look at pivot low
- If it is a turning trend point then to go one level higher than a pivot high.

I know it maybe troubled you. but if you refuse to i can understand. :-)

I tried Sam Seiden method for quite some time now but could not consistently profit with it. hope to learn something from you. Thanks.

If it worked he wouldn´t need to sell it, right?

Hi Miyo

He is one of those rare teachers where he proves he is very profitable and does live trading - so you can see it actually does work. He's an empassioned sharer and teacher. He does set and forget trading so has plenty of time to teach.
I know that isn't often the experience people have of learning - I know I've trained with a few of them myself, but coming across his training turned me into a profitable trader.

Take a look for yourself
Cheers

Can you post a link that proves he is profitable?

Hi guys, I'm using Sam Seiden's S/D profitably for about 8 months now. Although he makes it sound easy and the levels are helpful, there are quite a bit of things you need to take into account when trading fx with this. He makes it sound like he's picking tops and bottoms, but really he's trading with the direction of a much larger trend weekly/monthly. But as far as levels are concerned, S/D gives you the most accurate early entries from all the systems I've tried. And I've tried a lot of them. The reason why it's the only thing I stuck with is because when it does work, it gives an extremely high r/r. And also waiting for levels to come to you.

You also need to be prepared to lose a few before hitting that big one if there are stacked levels, because generally you can't be sure which one of the fresh stacks will actually give a rejection. Like today with NFP this was my chart from a few weeks back and look at what's happened:

Having said that, you do need to understand the reasons for the current trend, contrary to what Sam is saying. I always listen to a squawk service, it helps with understanding the fundies - especially when we're in a possible turn of direction on a larger scale. Forex is slightly more tricky with S/D and takes a little bit of time to get the grips with it, but it's such a valuable skill that it's really worth studying it. Hope that helps.

In one of the videos, I'm pretty sure he shows you the balance on the account. He trades other stuff and has loads of investments elsewhere, most wealthy people do, so he trades for daily income. And tbh SS might do workshops and stuff, but all the webinars on fxstreet are free.

Hi gristar I will give it a go, not so easy in this situation

I have attached 2 4 hrly charts on Eur/usd trade from yesterday (chart 2) and where the price entry level was identified way back (chart 1). I identified the level on chart 1, price had never been back there and it was at the beginning of a major uptrend up to 1.3710 from 1.2734 - 1.2768 (over a 1000 pips). I put two lines round that level identified from a 15 min chart and set an alarm for if price every came back. 4.4.13 it did. It spiked down through a level that had formed in the last couple of days (stopping out a lot of people I suspect if there was no wiggle room added on their stops - which was 1.2750) and went to 1.2744 - only 6 pips but this is where markets often just take people out and then go off in the direction they thought.

The second chart then shows this and then how it went quite rapidly up to 1.3028

So hopefully you can see that the price level (2 black lines) didn't go to the pivot low on chart 1 - but that little pullback just above it) What Sam calls a supply zone.

So there were still lots of willing buyers at 1.2744 - that level is now not 'fresh' so wouldn't be used again.

You can go to readthemarketdotcom and find lots of profitable traders using Supply/Demand zone analysis.

You can check out various threads here on FF. Try "Price is Everything", "PA by Julexo", and "B.S trading with Kenneth Lee".

The market's sole reason for existence is to bring buyers (demand) and sellers (supply) together. Whether Sam S is profitable or not does not change that. Sam could be the world's greatest teacher but the world's worst trader. Those two things can go together. Whilst the evidence does suggest that he is profitable, there are plenty of individuals out there who are profitable and not selling anything (which is probably what your real issue is).


P.S.

In before this thread gets moved to the commercial section. Even though Supply/Demand Analysis is a concept owed by no one, the mere mention of the name of someone who sells a product, makes the ^*%&#^$ moderators move things to where they don't belong.

Just skimmed through this site. Not many visitors. Found a few journals. Clicked on one which had some traffic. OP had a link to myfxbook in his signature. No longer active. Meh.


I followed one of these threads for a while (am not going to say which) to learn something. In the end, threadstarter lost consistently on his live calls. But whenever he had lost a certain amount, he started posting trades in hindsight: "Oh btw I went short a week ago from up there, am now 100s of pips in profit, bla bla bla".


No they don´t. They don´t go together at all!! wtf?!?


I´ll take it there´s no proof then that he can trade?


Huh? My real issue is:

"OP, don´t ever pay somebody for teaching who can not produce a live bank statement!"

Don´t be a muppet for god´s sake.

Edit: Chris Lori (I believe that´s how you spell it) sells teaching and runs a hedge fund. That means he´s audited. Check him out.

There is a lot of value there. You should give it more than a quick skim. You might find it worth the time.


Really? Tiger Woods has a putting coach (teacher) and this coach is not a professional golfer himself.

Are you saying every Harvard B-school professor is a multi million dollar entrepreneur or CEO of a fortune 500 company?

You can teach your son to throw a football, but that does not mean you were ever a starting quaterback on any level.

And on the other side of the spectrum, there are those who are experts in their craft, but don't have the ability to impart that skill to others. Do you think MJ (who had a coach himself by the way) can simply teach his greatness to others just because he was great?

And btw, I would not recommend spending money on anything either. There are plenty of ways to learn Supply/Demand without spending a dime.

This is the main reason why 95% of the people are not profitable trading FOREX.

If you want to have a system that has everything there, for entry point to exit, etc. and you have to do nothing, you are wrong. And this is also the reason why most of them will never get profitable as long as they are looking for the holy grail!

If you want to be profitable you have to WORK to be profitable.

The content on that website and the users are trading this method for years - some of them can triple accounts within a day.

But in order to do the same, you have to WORK ... put effort in it!

You dont get it for free - its just like everything else, sports...etc... if you want to be rich tomorrow - forget about it... its all about learning, discipline, and LOTS of screen time.

Now you can start and read (the market) through it and LEARN... or continue looking on Forex Factory for the next fancy indicator , and starting new methods every other day.

No, no, no. You´re mixing things up beyond comprehension. This is shop talk. I hope you aren´t a vendor yourself in the end! First, of course you don´t need to be a quarterback to teach your son how to throw a ball. It´s a very basic skill. You would be overqualified. The point is that the father doesn´t charge money for it, along with the promise to enable you to make a living from that one throw he just showed you (which is what Seiden does).

I´m not even going into the comparison with sports coaches (please - think about what you´re saying first!!): A trainer is a succesful trainer only when his team plays well. That´s how you measure his specific skill (which is "coaching"). And if his team underperforms for a few seasons in a row, he´ll lose his job. Now, do Sam Seiden´s accolytes outperform the market regularly? I highly doubt it. Show me proof. And if not, will that prevent Mr. Seiden from continuing to teach? Unfortunately not.

And teaching at a business school is again something completely different. The professors´ job isn´t to teach you how to start a profitable business (wtf?!!!) but to teach you a certain curriculum which then enables the student to successfully obtain a degree with which he can hopefully make some money in the outside world.

So what do have a college professor at a business school & a football coach in common? They either add value or they at some point in their life obtained credentials in a highly regulated process that qualify them to do their jobs. That´s why they deserve to get paid for what they do.

So would you trust said father to teach your kid, besides throwing a football properly, how to remove an appendix in college? Of course not, you need to be a doctor to teach that. You also need to be a certified legal professional to give legal advice. And here´s where Sam Seiden (ungracefully) comes again into play - he claims to teach a concise set of rules which leads to reproducable, profitable outcome to whoever employs it: a method/an edge!

And what a bold claim this is that Sam Seiden (and almost every other trading teacher) makes - to teach you an edge! That´s a system to beat the market, a skill in itself so elusive and rare, that it posesses almost mythical qualities: many academics claim it doesn´t even exist. A skill that´ll amass you riches beyond your wildest dreams. All from your armchair. Wow.

But, alas, for all we know, you cannot teach a trading edge to somebody, you can only give it away.
And a man selling trading education in form of a method is like a man selling treasure maps, claiming the only reason he´s selling it is because he´s too old to dig out the gold chest himself. And of course, even if the map was legit, like with any edge/treasure map, the more people know of it, the chance that it´s you who´s gonna obtain the treasure is diminishing with every copy.

But did Mr. Seiden have said "treasure map" in the first place? Would be so easy to prove it. Just show a live bank statement, a legitimate long-term trading record on myfxbook. Doesn´t exist? Maybe it doesn´t matter in the end, Mr. Seiden long hade his money, his pupils got what they wanted, too, which is hope (just a faint glimmer suffices).

OK, long rant, maybe inconcise, I don´t care right now. Anyway, trading vendors really p*ss me off!!!! Scum of the earth! Hate them, hate them, hate them!


btw, I googled "Tiger woods Putting coach" because I couldn´t believe your claim. Seems like - as of now (2013) - Wodds´ putting coach is indeed a professional golfer by the name of Steve Stricker (PGA champion, 57 consecutive weeks in the world top-10 & "one of the best putters in the game" - random internet source). And even if these things do exist (amateur savant teaching successful professional), they are clearly the exception to the rule.

What in God´s name are you blabbering about? Leave me alone with that sh*t.

Nobody is forced to trade supply and demand. If this sounds either too easy or too hard for you, you can continue the path of finding the ultimate system ;-)

Have fun!

How did this degenerate into a pissing contest so quickly?

@ gillh1 I'd love to show you my trade journal. It has many 'set and forget' trades waiting to be hit and also screen shots etc of past trades. I think it may provide more insight than sharing screenshots on here. It's a Google Spreadsheet - so if you PM me your email I can share the doc with you

All my trades are 'set and forget' type of orders. I take them off the 4h and 1h charts while using the Weekly and Daily to determine the bigger picture. I'm trading the 1h and 4h mostly because it suits my trade style but also because I cannot be at the computer all the time.

I am using all the Odds Enhancers but because my trades are 'set and forget' I can only apply 'Arrival' in retrospect.

Also they are all set with a Risk:Reward of 1:3. I gathered from the videos that using an opposing level is how you set your Target for Take Profit - but since I can't be around to see what that level is I just set it at 1:3. Not sure if this is hampering my efforts or not.

One of my challenges so far is applying the Bigger Picture odds enhancer. I will find what looks to be a good level on a 1h or 4h chart but I can't determine where it is on the higher time frame curve because they are often not as 'clean'.

Also I think I understand your description of the aha moment. But I'm confused as to how you did back-testing? Since it requires multiple time-frames how was that possible?

Great to hear that you've been trading profitably with this system for so long. Would live to hear your feedback on my trades.