Should you join a trade group or not?
A look at the pros and cons.
Trade Rooms or Trade Groups can be fun and rewarding but they can also be problematic too, right? Let’s look at some pros and cons of joining a group or trade room today.
Why you should join:
You’re new, you need to learn or you’re an intermediate trader looking to expand your trade ideas and trade management methods. This can run the gamut from the fact that you do not know hardly anything and you want to cut your learning curve by years all the way to “I am just bored to death” and you want other traders to talk to, share ideas with and have another group of eyeballs hunting for trades with me; exits, entries, etc.
Now let’s talk about why you should not join a trade room:
I cannot speak for everyone but I can say that I have joined about 15 to 20 trade rooms in my life and many of them were pure garbage! They were not worthy of me being in them for 3 days or a week, let alone a month. I have been in rooms I stayed in for a month and just shook my head and walked away saying “Oh… my… Gosh!” and there is no way on earth I would return! They could not even pay me to return.
Not a chance.
Another reason you should not join is if you are one of a complaining spirit. Do you like to just argue or fight with others or if you think you’re right and your way is the only way? You should just be a loaner and stay with your style and system then. I am a firm believer that a ton of forex traders are very much loaners; kinda leaning heavily to the antisocial side. And that is OK, if that is how you like to be. Not knocking it. I’m just saying that on the other side we find the helpful folks; those that really like to help others and be a part of a team of great guys and gals. If you’re a helpful trader and like to share ideas, a trade room might be a good thing for you.
I have found over the years of running a few trade rooms, that there are so many different kinds of people with various thoughts and ways of looking at things. Some are open to learning new things and others are very against anything that conflicts with whatever way they got hooked on to begin with.
Maybe it’s just me but I really like to have others point stuff out sometimes; things I might just be missing or not paying attention to or not really thinking about. I just find that it helps me to have a few dozen sets of eyeballs scanning and looking for trades and then mentioning when they see something that looks good or is starting to set up.
I also find trading very, very boring! It’s so monotonous! It’s the same boring darn thing day in and day out; hunt for trades mix with patience and push buttons, mix with patience and book my trades. It’s agonizingly boring to me but having trader buddies to chat with helps me out a ton. Honestly, I think I would die of boredom without my trader friends. Who the heck else am I going to talk about trading to? My wife? My kids? My friends? Their eyes glaze over when I do! They have no idea at all what I am even saying.
In my ultra-tiny select trade group that I have going right now it’s just a few folks and I am doing all I can to keep it small because the quality is higher. I find that my group of guys and gals are basically good friends. We share a lot of time together and it helps the day go by in a much nicer way.
So, when selecting some group to join, the best advice I can give you is to stay a month at the very least and learn all that you can. If you can handle staying longer because it’s a good fit then that’s great. I would not recommend a half- hearted “try” because a lot of times if you do not put effort in at all in order to learn, you get nothing out of it. I can repeat that most of the rooms I have been in where horrible. I learned a ton from this. What not to do and how not to be. I guess that is worth it… a little bit. Everything teaches us, doesn’t it?
So learn from the good and the bad I guess. Hey, you know the story of Bruce Lee, right? He studied 21 forms of martial arts before coming into his own way. Not a bad idea. You could do the same thing. Learn from a bunch of mentors and become your own trader.
After 18 years, I do indeed consider myself a Grand Master 10th degree and I feel that at this point I am just done. I really cannot go higher and I am ok with this. I really am. I have reached my pinnacle.
Others are on the climb up. How can they cut the learning curve? Study under others.
But choose your mentors very carefully. Sadly, these days, we have a ton of “trading gurus” out there in the Facebook and Twittersphere that are just pure scammers; con artists that don’t really care about you at all. They just want your money. You mean nothing to them other than another subscriber they get to add to the list of 200 they have, so that they can make 20K a month off of you all collectively.
If you cannot find a mentor that will be there for you and answer your questions and take you by the hand and help you make money, grow and learn then wait until that one comes along. They are a very, very rare find.