Forex forums and online communities for traders are basically designed for traders to exchange ideas and trading systems to help them profit from trading the forex market. Can traders actually succeed by following these forex forums? We think the chances are very small. We will present better alternatives and a clear trading system to follow.
Format and Layout of Forex Forums
Most forex forums are subdivided into categories like trading systems, trading discussions, basic training for new traders, expert advisors, broker discussion, commercial content, etc. Each category has threads for individuals to start discussions about more particular topics. This facilitates interaction between the users. This is called user generated content.
What Forex Forums Are Available to Traders
There are a large number of forex forums available to forex traders, a few of them are quite popular with thousands of traders. If you search the web for “forex forums” you will see some top brands like Forexfactory or Babypips. There are also large forex discussion forums on places like Reddit, Telegram, Facebook Groups and Quora.
Being one of the largest and most popular forex forums means very little. There are some articles on the web about forex forums like “best forex forums ratings” or “top forex forums” but at the end of the day these forums all have the same pros and cons. Many forums are not maintained at all by the website owners and are loaded with spam, along with lots of pop up ads littering the pages.
What Is The Objective of Forex Forums Owners
The people who run and manage forex forums are only interested in click ad revenue from forex brokers, or having you sign up for a live trading account through one of the click ads. If you open a trading account through one of the broker ads the forum owner gets paid on all of your trades as an introducing broker. Forex forum owners are not interested in anything other than this revenue. They have no interest or motivation to make anyone a successful trader. Some forums have so many click ads embedded in the pages that it destroys the user’s experience. Any course for sale for thousands of dollars the forum owners gets part of the fee as an affilliate. Any discussion of a competing commercial signals or alerts service on any forex forum will likely result of you being removed or banned from the forum.
Ideal Scenario For a Trader Using a Forum
In a perfect world a new forex trader would come to a forum looking for a great forex trading strategy, then would find the strategy fairly quickly and use the strategy to make positive trades. Or a trader could post questions and look for someone to help them with their questions. Having a discussion board for traders, posting messages, and having a place to find quality forex education resources is a great idea, but the reality is much different.
In reality most of the traders on forums are beginners, and most of their questions go unanswered because there are too many of them. In some cases beginners are looking for someone to program a robot with their untested ideas. This never works because nobody is willing to do this for free then guarantee the programs will work. Anyone looking for a trading system might find one but it will be difficult. Some trading systems on some forex forums have over 1000 pages of posts on just one system so you must wade through all of this just to see if it is a trading system you like. This is on top of the fact that there might be 2000 trading systems on just one forum. All of this starts to cause conflict and confusion on the forum users. An entire year can go by with no progress towards successful trading.
Most forex forums are open and unmoderated, it can become a huge problem. This creates alot of content and lots of repetitive questions. On top of that is that forum participants cannot get their questions answered. The sheer size of the forums and the amount of information means that traders can read for days and months sifting through large amounts of information looking for a cohesive trading system that either require no programming or is ready to use.
The discussion of robots and expert advisors is a prominent part of most forums, however expert advisors do not work at all, and 99% of forex traders can’t program anyway. Many forex forum members request or seek help programming an expert advisor or script. These requests go almost completely ignored. Even if a request is filled no programming results can be guaranteed in any way. Lots of forum members want something programmed but very few good programmers are willing to fill their needs.
Experienced and profitable forex traders have no real reason or motivation to be on a forex forum. They are too busy trading and making pips. Most forums do have a few successful traders who are willing to answer questions and share some or all of their trading systems. But most of them get beaten down by the new traders asking them questions they eventually abandon the forums.
There is almost no unique information on any forex forum, none whatsoever. All of the information on most forex forums is available elsewhere.
Can Traders Find A Profitable Trading System On A Forum
Forex forums are completely dominated by technical indicators. So when a forum member makes a post about a new trading system, it is just a combination of existing off the shelf technical indicators. The problem with this is that we all know that forex technical indicators do not work and are completely unreliable. So on top of the fact that you must sift through hundreds of “Trading systems”, all of them are based on flawed technical indicators, or some combination of indicators. This can result in several months or even years of lost time for traders looking for a valid trading system. You can find some good trading systems on forex forums but the sheer size of the popular forums makes it nearly impossible to figure out which trading system is strong and profitable. Demo trading 100 trading systems you found on a forum is not the answer.
New forex traders can get led in the any one of 1000 wrong directions with the technical indicators discussion. Almost nothing is verifiable and no true and complete trading systems are available on forums. You can waste months and years on forex forums and not learn how to trade at all.
We think forex forums and trading communities are a good idea, but they always get crushed under their own weight. Having hundreds of trading systems confuses traders. Inability to get questions answered or get help creates frustration, and this can boil over to conversations getting nasty and flaming each other.
How Much Information on Forex Forums Is Useful ?
The huge volume of information on most forex forums dilutes the helpful information. After looking over many of the popular forums, we would guess that 1-2% of the information on these forums is helpful. The rest is all “filler” comments, opinions, random conversations, or repetition from other threads. The sheer volume of information bogs everything down.
Better Alternative to Forex Forums
As an alternative to forex forums for finding a profitable trading system, we invite all forex traders to evaluate the Forexearlywarning trading system. This is a trend based trading system that focuses on the higher time frames. All of the documentation for the trading system is clear, well organized and easy to find in our 35 forex lessons, which is a series of illustrated articles fully detailing our trading system. We also have a complete video library. Both of these resources are free. We believe this trading system is substantially better than any trading system found on all forex forums.
Here is an example trade using the Forexearlywarning trading system. The USD is weak on all pairs based on our live indicator, The Forex Heatmap® forex heatmap. Due to some NZD strength in the market the NZD/CAD made the strongest intraday movement. This is what traders need. Clear, simple systems that ae easy to interpret for making trade decisions. If the NZD/CAD is in an uptrend on the larger time frames, then more pips are possible beyond the strong intraday movement cycle.
Forex Forums, Do They Improve Traders Success ?
Forex Forums, Do They Improve Traders Success ?
These live indicators and simple trend indicators work the same way for 8 different currencies and a total of 28 of the most popular pairs. Having a trading system like this with all of the documentation well organized on several web pages is what traders need. Our trading system includes probably the most powerful chart setup available to forex traders.
On a typical forex forum, it could take someone several months or possibly years to piece together a profitable trading system. Sifting through hundreds of trading systems and disorganized documentation for each system based on technical indicators is a huge time waster. This can delay a forex traders’ success time line by several years. All you need is one effective trading system that is fully documented, and you have eliminated the need for forums altogether. Any questions about our trading system is an email away.
Conclusions About Forex Forums – If a trader wants to be part of a forex trading forum and their goal is to find a successful trading system that is well documented, they will likely be very disappointed. We suggest checking out the Forexearlywarning trading system first. Then if you believe a forex forum has any additional value you can move forward with becoming a member of one or more of them.