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I stand by my initial remarks. I was subscribed to VVS for 4 months. Augusto is actually one of the only mentors I have seen the myfxbook and call/manage trades live. He is also a good teacher, which is also important! He doesn't focus much on high RR trades though, he's more into high win ratio, which honestly is better for your psychology. The reason I stopped using his strategy was because I found the strategy too complex for me (not his fault, he made VSA/Wyckoff as simple as it can be) and I was interested in something more simple, like Vertex. If you watch his last youtube videos you will have an idea of how he approaches the market. I don't know why people say Vertex is for newbies or its too basic. My friend dropped out of medical school, with just a few months left when he became consistently profitable. And although we are now trading in a different way, he was trading very similarly to Vertex back then. I was also doing good to some extend, but I was going through some personal issues and got messed up psychologically, so I stopped trading for a while. Flipping Markets, Precision markets and Fractal Markets are also good. Granted Flipping's voice/accent gets on my nerves lol, but it's actually decent if you can get through that. They have some subtle differences when it comes to Market Structure more precisely what they consider to be points of structure (which in turn influences how a Break of Structure happens). Also Vertex gives you more of a flexibility with the timeframes, whereas others use specific timeframes. But all in all they're very similar. I don't like Phantom much, it's all over the place in my opinion, but if you want an all-around knowledge it's ok. That being said... For VSA/Wyckoff + SMC = VVS Academy For just SMC = Vertex/Flipping Markets/Precision markets/Fractal Markets. I'll say this though, regardless of the strategy you use, the most important thing will always be the timeframes. The higher the timeframe, the stronger a level will be. It just then becomes a matter of confirming that level on a lower timeframe, because what happens in a lower timeframe will also happen in a higher timeframe, as long as both are in sync and you can't really know this if you don't have the overall picture.

I'm reposting this again, since my last post was flagged and sadly moderation seems non-existent in this forum. Well, I have traded with both SMFX and Cointrader96 in the past, very good consistent traders. SMFX learned from Cris Lori and Cointrader96 from ICT and they both trade very similarly. (Also, Cointrader96 trading system is based on ICT's free YouTube videos, not on the mentorship videos.) So the thing to keep in mind is, there isn't one exact way of trading "Smart Money Concepts" (SMC) and this is why people struggle with the way Inner Circle Trader (ICT) teaches, because he teaches many SMC models and therefore you have to pick what suits you and disregard the rest. You have to create your own trading system and this requires you to backtest and actually put in the work. You pair this with his unnecessary long videos teaching you more about colognes than trading itself and you start to realize why people don't like his teachings. Now, the reason people don't like the man himself is a whole different discussion... You see, there's nothing new under the sun, it all comes back to Wyckoff, Elliot Waves, Dow theory and WD Gann. These traders understood how the market moved +100 years ago and all recent technical analysis are, in one way or the other, inspired in these methodologies. ICT however insists that he invented all the "SMC" stuff himself and even made bold claims such as Richard Wyckoff would be his mentee if he was still alive. Most people outside ICT's group think differently and this is where all the drama stems from. Those ICT traders will, more often than not, find themselves entering the market at the same time as Wyckoff traders. Wyckoff at its core is nothing more than liquidity creation + manipulation (shakeouts) and return to supply and demand zones. So one can argue that it's the same thing, but different perspectives. Whether he learned from Chris Lori, Larry Williams or directly from Wyckoff it doesn't matter. ICT brought what was was already available everywhere to the forefront. He took what he learned, packaged it, made words for it and taught it. The other SMC traders who learned from Chris Lori and/or ICT simply refined it. In the end, you have to find what resonates with you. Some people prefer to go back and learn directly from the books of the great traders I mentioned above and others prefer to learn from someone else's interpretations. Being refined doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, there's always room for improvement. So to end this long reply, this is how the timeline goes like: Wyckoff > Larry Williams & Cris Lori & ICT > ProficientFX & IML > RC Visionaries & WWA > All other SMC mentorships/courses I'm not sure which courses you watched, but remember, the market is fractal no matter how you look at it: Wyckoff, trendlines, equal lows, supply and demand, Order Blocks, etc. We are essentially trading Market Structure here, the Order Blocks are just for Entries. If the Order Blocks aren't holding price, chances are your Market Structure analysis is wrong. More often than not, this is due to the Top Down Analysis. I recommend that you watch this video: Again, if you are interested in "SMC", I recommend Vertex or VVS Academy (Smart Money Source) for this. I personally like when my Order Blocks leave an imbalance behind, this is a good confirmation that price needs to come back and mitigate it. And just like you said, they are also good when used as targets. As a matter of fact, Levi from ProficientFX trades like this. You can trade from Orderblock to Orderblock. Basically, you go to the H4 or H1 and mark the imbalances and liquidity as to where price could potentially go, and then look for a clean Order Block (by clean I mean, engulfing candle that took EQH/EQL, with no wick/small wick, and left imbalance behind) targetting liquidity on the way to another OrderBlock. Example: ​