Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing Review

Thanks for reading today’s review of the Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing.

Before we jump into this, let’s talk about the game of whack-a-mole. You know how it works: the player is given a baton and must smash the mole to score a point. As the game progresses, the mole becomes increasingly clever and faster.

Eventually, a weaker player will grow tired and confused. He relents. His stroke becomes uneven and dulled. I am not one of those players.

Writing about “investment educators” is a lot like playing whack-a-mole. Sometimes I write a nasty article, and in near real-time, their website will disappear.

However, a few days later, the very same website will reappear under a new domain name. With a slight variation in the branding.

You see, once the article is indexed and Google ranks the negative article on Page One of the search results — then it’s game over. The fraud is exposed.

Today, we are going to talk about (yet again) Sam Seiden and his latest investment educational scam: Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing.

Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing

What is the Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing? In whack-a-mole parlance, the Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing is simply the third iteration of the same old scam that Sam Seiden has been playing for the past 20+ years.

The Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing wants you to pay $9k per year to “watch Sam Seiden trade live.”

The scam is simple. Drive newbie day traders and get rich quick daydreamers into a “live trading chatroom” and then convince them that if they simply “copy the master trader” then they themselves will also become fabulously rich and adored by bikini babes everywhere.

All you have to do is “show up and copy the trades” and “you can make money every day.” In fact, Sam Seiden’s most recent performance page gives people hope that they can achieve results like shown below…

This little screen clip might be confusing or hard to read, so I compiled the “real-time” performance for the past 5 months. And they are as follows:

Month 1) According to Sam Seiden, he executed 513 trades and earned 50% to 2000% per trade. His average win percentage was 71%.

Sam averaged 23 trades per day.

Month 2) 625 total trades, 50% to 2000% per trade, average win rate 73%. Average of 29 trades per day.

Month 3) 756 total trades, 50% to 2000% per trade, average win rate 69%. Average of 34 trades per day.

Month 4) 861 total trades, 50% to 2000% per trade, average win rate 73%. Average of 39 trades per day.

Month 5) 794 total trades, 50% to 2000% per trade, average win rate 71%. Average of 36 trades per day.

Pretty incredible right? Just show up, copy the roughly 35 trades each day and earn 50% to 2000% per trade. No losing months!

Just for fun, I programmed these statistics into a compounding spreadsheet to discover what my investment return would be over a 5-month period. And I assumed a $1k per investment, per trade, compounding the profits. The result? Hope you are sitting down…

In total, I would have turned $1k into $360,000,000,000,000 trillion dollars in only 5-months. Seriously folks, who would be stupid enough to believe any of this nonsense?

Apparently, there is no shortage of suckers on the internet willing to pay this guy $9k per year for his “magical” trading indicators.

But to really understand how so many people fall for this scam, you really have to put yourself through the sales process — which I did.

The Sales Scheme

Everything scammy starts on YouTube. And Sam Seiden is definitely a creature of YouTube. In fact, if you run a general search on YouTube for ‘Sam Seiden’ you will find hundreds upon hundreds of videos where Sam is pontificating on his “magical” investment indicators.

One would think that such a puff artist as Sam Seiden would undoubtedly have a dubious reputation with hundreds of what are essentially “get rich quick” videos with millions of views. But alas, a perusal of circuit courts in Los Angeles and Orange County, California turns up a bevy of defamation lawsuits that his company has filed against his very own students, or anyone else willing to criticize him.

All of this to suppress the truth about Sam Seiden. But as Sam Seiden found out the hard way in 2019, TradingSchools.Org will not be bullied by a pathetic little dweeb.

But I digress. Lets get back to the sales scheme…

During the month of February 2021, after watching one of the worthless YouTube videos published by Sam Seiden, I was driven into one of his sales funnels.

I next signed up (using an alias) for a free “training webinar” where I was supposed to learn some sort of financial secret. Unfortunately, after sitting through a nearly two-hour online presentation, it became apparent that I would not be learning about “the secret” that would make me fabulously wealthy.

Instead, what I had to endure was what amounted to indoctrination into the financial Church of Scientology. Seriously folks, this Sam Seiden character is portrayed as some sort of financial Reverand Jim Jones — begging his flock to voluntarily drink the koolaid.

Honestly, it’s really hard to explain just how weird this 120-minute sales presentation really is. The character running the presentation was a person named Shamus O’Connor and his job is essentially that of a cult evangelist.

For the first thirty minutes of the presentation, he launched into his sales presentation with the wild vigor of a used car salesman on methamphetamine who had not slept in three days. He made the bold claim that “because of Sam Seiden and his magical trading strategy” he was able to put his children through private schools and a private college. That Sam Seiden’s magical trading indicator works for ALL markets including stocks, Forex, futures, options, cryptocurrency (and used cars).

And he even claimed it worked on all time frames. It doesn’t matter if you apply it to 5-second tick charts or 500-year Japanese rice charts…” it works on everything!!!”

Although I could write for another 3000 words on all of the “magic” that you will supposedly learn from Sam Seiden…this would be a waste of time. Instead, I prefer to give you an artistic rendition of Shamus cultlike adulation of Sam Seiden…

If this all sounds familiar, well it should. This is the very same sales pitch that Shamus has been using to sell this financial snake oil for the past 14 years. Yes, Shamus has been working for and selling Sam Seiden’s financial snake oil for the past 14 years.

What is also plum crazy is that these very same profit claims regarding putting children through private schools and colleges were already proven to be pure poppycock by the Federal Trade Commission when they shut down Sam Seiden in his previous scam — the Online Trading Academy.

You can read all about that $370 million dollar scam here.

If you did not read about the Online Trading Academy scam, my article explains how these turds pulled off one most notorious “investment school” scams that the Federal Trade Commission ever prosecuted.

If you are not exhausted after reading the Online Trading Academy article that I published, then perhaps you will be, after reading my next article on (yet another) scam “investment school” that Sam Seiden was running immediately after the FTC shut down the Online Trading Academy. That scam trading school was called The Seiden Strategies.

Did I not warn you that writing articles about these scammers is like playing whack-a-mole?

Verifying Performance

One of the problems in writing articles about these scammers is obtaining actual, verifiable account statements that can legitimize the trading performance of the “financial guru.”

In the Online Trading Academy case, I actually went undercover and obtained secret recordings and videos of the sales presentation within the Online Trading Academy office in San Diego, Ca.

It was effective. In fact, the Federal Trading Commission also took the same investigative approach and sent in their own investigators to pose as potential customers so they could also experience the same high-pressure bullshit sales presentation that I also experienced.

So how was the actual trading performance of Sam Seiden and his students at this last scam? Not good. In fact, the FTC audited not only the trading accounts of Sam Seiden over a very long period of time but also the trading account statements of the students at various brokerages.

One thing we know for sure, Sam Seiden is a horrible trader. Once again, I recommend that readers direct their attention to the emergency restraining order and asset freeze that gives granular details of how Sam’s trading performance over a several year period showed he was a net losing trader.

Unless of course, you factor in his “hypothetical performance” where fake money profits sprouted forth like mana from Jesus.

And since Sam is such a horrible trader, then it would also make perfect sense that his students would also be horrible traders. They were paying for ($60k), and learning his “magical” method and their negative investment results were also revealed in the FTC investigation.

According to court records, the Federal Trade Commission analyzed 4,799 student trading accounts.

The average account size varied between $5k to $15k. Of all of these accounts, 74.9% of the accounts lost an average of 94%. One poor fella lost over $1.3 million investing with Sam’s “magical” trading advice.

With all of this in mind, usually I would foreclose any possibility that Sam Seiden could ever possibly transform himself into a winning trader.

Yet, in the performance of my duties of writing a responsible review, I reached out to Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing in hopes of obtaining the verifiable trading performance of Sam Seiden.

The phonecall with Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing

Once again, using an alias, I called the toll free phone number of Pinnacle Institute of Trading and Investing in hopes of obtaining the actual trading statements of Sam Seiden.

Or, at the very least, getting some sort of explanation of the trading records which appear to be pure fantasy.

I was connected to a person named Josh Kurtzberg, who described himself as an educational counselor.

I asked him plainly and nicely, all with the coating of a man on the verge of pulling out his credit card and splurging for the $9k annual package. His response was actually quite refreshing.

In detail, he explained that the performance summary was “purely aspirational” and “It’s not real. It’s just hypothetical performance.” My god, he answered with candor and honesty! Totally impressive performance.

But what he next launched into can only be considered as performance art. With the deftness of a practiced ballerina, he then pirouetted into a routine of what I would describe as verbal gymnastics. Clever words were flying in every direction, but it all made perfect sense. After a few minutes, even I was wondering why actual verifiable performance was even relevant or useful in evaluating the “consummate trading master, Sam Seiden.”

Josh Kurtzberg is truly a master salesman. He had me laughing and feeling quite positive at the prospect of flushing $9k down the toilette. He even mentioned that “at some point, Sam is going to start showing a live account but we are working on the technical issues.”

After I ended the phone call. I was truly in the ether. This guy had me floating in the clouds. And it’s not easy getting this grizzled old review troll to float in the hypothetical performance ether.

But then, I better run a check on this Kurtzberg fella so I could understand more about him. Such a great salesman.

Well, its turns out that Josh Kurtzberg is the former top salesman at the Online Trading Academy. In addition, he truly is a performance artist. And I mean TRULY…apparently before he became trading huckster, he actually was a ballerina.

As crazy as this reads, if you Google ‘Josh Kurtzberg Ballerina’ you will find a small portion of the internet where he is jumping and twirling and flying all over the stage wearing his tight little pants and soft ballerina slippers.

The dude literally is Peter Pan. And who doesn’t like Peter Pan?

Wrapping things up. And a message to Sam Seiden.

I am sure that more than a few of Sam Seiden’s former students at Online Trading Academy are going to read this article.

I have fielded literally hundreds of emails from pissed off consumers that got swindled by Online Trading Academy.

Nearly all of these people have no voice. No platform where there voice can be heard. So I am wrote this article for all of you little folks that got scammed, and want others to know the truth about Sam Seiden.

And Sam Seiden, undoubtedly you will also read this article as well. For our history runs deep, and your threats ring shallow. Let me say the following to you Sam…

Sam, you are hurting people. And I mean not just the consumers that have trusted you over the past 20 years. But also the legitimate vendors that actually have a verifiable track record, and a decent product to offer.

Sam Seiden, I will be the first person to write something nice about you. But you need to start supplying consumers with your actual, verifiable track record. You need to quite the hypothetical performance nonsense that is plainly a fraudulent representation. Nobody on planet earth can earn these types of returns, even the best money managers have a hard time beating the market. Yet you are claiming profits that are the stuff of fantasy.

Get real Sam. Just put it out there. Just put out your real performance. Even if your real performance is as pathetic and skinny as a homeless puppy — I will write and spin it into a glorious achievement. In short, I will join your whacky cult.

Sam, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to get a good night’s sleep, and look at yourself in the mirror? Wouldn’t it be nice to stop changing company names and rebranding because I wrote yet another article exposing your fraud?

Come into the light Sam. I am waiting.

Thanks for reading.

-Emmett