Beware The Trading Forums

This may sound ironic since I first learned about order flow trading form the forex factory forums.  But over the years, I have learned that trading forums need to be treated very skeptically.  I first joined forexfactory back in 2006. I have made two or three hundred posts or so.  But my interest in it has been waning over the years.

Advantages of Forums

First let me start off with all the good that trading forums offer.  They let thousands of aspiring traders, mixed in with a few professionals, to talk about the market and share their ideas.  Almost every single type of trading strategy can be found on a forum.  Tens of thousands of threads, with hundreds of thousands of replies.  Almost every single type of system available.  Thousands of technical indicators being used in a thousand different ways, with another thousand different settings that can be implemented.  Hundreds of forex robots, or metatrader tools available.  All sorts of chart patterns, price patterns.  There is even some astrology and mathematical order to the markets mixed in as well.  All sorts of trading information for a variety of different personalities.  Whatever you are looking for, chances are a trading forum has got whatever you believe works best and soothes your soul.

Trading forums also give you a place to socialize since trading can be a very lonely endeavor.

The forums give you a great job of exposing yourself to a wide variety of trading systems and methodology.  But eventually you need to move into implementation, execution, and figuring out what works.

A great bastion of information forums are.  But how much of it generates order flow?  How much of it moves markets?  How many of them provide an edge?  How many of the trading systems ask the right trading questions and answer them correctly?

No trader, not even one that has thousands of hours available to them can sift through all the threads in the forums and test out all the systems.  No one can view the hundreds and thousands of pages of replies and tweaks the authors have made.  It is just an impossible task.  Aspiring traders that want to reach a new pinnacle of fast trading success require some sort of blueprint and process to go through.  The trading profit ladder and order flow trader cycle shows a rough idea of my own trading journey and how yours can potentially develop.  The order flow mastery course will include the complete version and process.

I discovered price action trading from the forexfactory forum.  Then I discovered order flow trading.  I guess I should be grateful for having gone through the process.  Long road, painful, but I am grateful in the end.

But I had to sift through a ton of junk in order to find my way through.  There were times I would be sitting there on the forex forums, staring at all the threads and wondering if this whole forex thing was a scam.  I was wondering if it was possible to even possible to sort all the information out.  I didn’t know if I would find success.

Hundreds and thousands of traders browsing the forums are faced with the same dilemma.  They are suffering from information overload from the trading forums.

There are still some great threads and great members that post.  Some great threads include:

Order Flow – Achieving the mindset

Order Flow – Finding cluster of stops on chart

Click Here To Get The Free Report

Disadvantages of forums

One of the big disadvantages noted above is that there is a ton of junk information that you need to sift through and sort in order to get to the good stuff.  Some of the junk information are about things which do not generate order flow.  But others are about conspiracy theories in the markets and about life.  There are many posters who troll around the forums posted links to various videos and spouting off on various theories, many of which are some conspiracies.

I hear about plenty of conspiracies and theories about the market from various family and friends, especially during those summer barbeque parties.  From the illuminati controlling the world, to Goldman Sachs controlling the forex market.  I don’t need to hear about any more conspiracy theories in the trading forums.

I would much rather focus on what is going to cause the next 200 pip move in the forex market.  Now that is something to ponder heavily about.

Don’t underestimate the ability of various misconceptions and conspiracies to delay your trading success.  They delayed my trading success by many months, even a year or two.  I am still to this day slaying various conspiracies I may have about the markets and the world that may be reducing my trading profit potential.  Luckily the big ones that preventing me from making money were slayed years ago.

Forums can also distract you from what truly matters, which is doing the order flow research necessary to catch the big trading moves.  Some people once they get on their computers jump straight to the forex forums to view the new threads and catch up on other ones.  They do it religiously.  They may check the forums thirty times a day.  It distracts you and makes you lose focus from the order flow trades that you should be planning and researching on.

Which is one of the reasons why I did not post much in the trading forums.  You want to be big on implementation and execution of the order flow principles.  When you make thousands and thousands of posts, then you stand the risk of getting distracted from what truly matters

So what is the solution you ask?

Go to a trading forum and pick the top 5 or 10 members who’s posts you believe contain wisdom and trading knowledge and just follow them.  Whenever they post you read their posts.  Then you can go pick the top 5 trading threads to follow.  If a new post is made in those you check them.  Other than that, I like to keep my time limited on the trading forums.  I do like forexfactory’s calendar though.

You should absolutely look for additional stimulation of the mind.  I have my own trading process for doing so.  It usually involves reading a new trading book about global macro, or reading some new articles about the market.