Reading market related forums. Why?
The hypotheses are as follow:
I. Exchange of market related information. (Learning?)
- Is a community where posters choose to come and go. Psychological ideas, techniques of relevancies, and student/teacher style advice are some of them.
- Looking for latest trader thoughts, insights, spontaneously mind meld, expect the unexpected thread. It’s like turning on TV flipping all channels until something catch your eyes.
- I am there to read mostly, but trading is a lonely business, so it’s good to interact with traders. It’s also nice to be able to help when I can and to be helped.
II. Place to meet people from same “category” trying to solve same situations.
- For a solitary trader: Reading the forums and sometimes contributing to them makes me current and I feel I am a member of a community. During the last 5 years, I mostly read market related forums for entertainment value, not the arguments and nonsense, but because no one else I know outside of computer-platform has a clue about trading. And forums is addictive for some reason. Also an excuse not to work, i guess.
Personal broker, software, data reviews, psychology, individual triumphs and failures, etc. Where else would you find info like that? A lot of people seem to be frustrated about not being able to quickly find an easy and profitable system, so they can make money right now. I think that they should ease up on finding answers from someone else and get to work.
III. Entertainment purposes.
- Is a place to hang out with like kind. This is the closest to a 24 hrs coffeeshop/bar/restaurant gathering of fellow peers I’ll ever approach.
- I few things of character I learn there are that many feel they are in a dueling competition and feel the need to compete by trying to discredit others, some like to bash stupid questions, and some have an overall negativity. I read these for entertainment as well as to give myself an idea of all the walks of life. Allowing me to choose who to be a role model, who I feel sorry for, learning how I want my character as a trader to be.
- There are so many posters that actually live out their trader fantasies. There’s a psychology dissertation somewhere amongst all their posts. The great thing about the Internet, anyone can be anything at anytime even with markets related themes.
