Thinking of Adding a Forum:
Three of the most commented articles on this site are related to what I consider to be scams or scams in the making : the EA Rev Trader Pro and FxKeys website here and here. There is some valuable information in those comments that I missed in my research before writing the articles. This shows me what harnessing the power of the community can achieve. That’s when a thought hit me: what if we can use this power not only in exposing scams, but to improve in all areas of trading, from technical and fundamental analysis to psychology ?
Online trading communities (forums) have been around for ages, but I pretty fast grew disenchanted with them, some of the reasons I covered in one of my first posts on this site, here. To expand on that, most of the forums out there are not run by traders. As a matter of fact, we don’t even know who is behind them. Check the ‘About’ sections of ForexFactory or BabyPips, two of the biggest forex related online communities. See what I mean ?
‘Well, who cares who runs them, I’m learning ‘stuff’ there and that’s all I care about’ is a common answer to the point I raised. Leaving aside for the moment the quality of the ‘stuff’, many people have been hurt financially by having this ‘I don’t care’ attitude. I don’t know how many of you were around some +6 years ago to remember guys like Vegas or Jacko from ForexFactory who built large followings and then ran away with the money the naive people entrusted them to ‘manage’. There were countless of red flags raised for what in Jacko’s case was a blatant fraud – he promised guaranteed returns, and he would top up from his own funds if he didn’t manage to achieve the predetermined returns (!!). Think about it, without the full support of ForexFactory how many people would have listened and trusted him ? There were many red flags raised all along the way, but management heavily censored them (if they were in on the scam or just taking advantage of the traffic these questionable characters created, it’s everybody’s guess).
Having said that, what I intend to create is an online community for serious forex and CFD traders. One where dubious and faceless entities trying to fleece beginners can’t take hold. One where members can feel safe that no one will take advantage of their lack of knowledge. No ‘price action’ threads and then come to my site to buy my $300 course like you see on Babypips. It will take a while until I figure out the technical part of all this, but I’m enthusiastic about the idea of creating something new that will bring value to traders.