ichi360

Last year, I took on too much. So much that it became extremely difficult to manage everything, a lot of people got upset because they could not get what they were expecting. Then in the later part of the year I decided to cut back on stuff and keep only those things which I can handle successfully.

A part of that cut back also resulted getting rid of the Forex Forums. The same forums that helped me finding good friends, teachers and those you can rely on. The kind of stuff I learned on the forums was simple priceless but unfortunately it has a hidden cost attached to it too. IMHO, there are a few major problems with these forums:

1. Noise Factor: I’ve now realized that Trading is actually a Lone Wolf business, everyone has a different temperament, hence we trade with different objectives in our mind which eventually leads us to using different systems and timeframes. It can get quite confusing when you’re trading on Daily TF and when someone on the forum posts his / her 15min analysis showing Price Action working against you … it can be quite a challenge to stay on track and avoid this Noise factor

2: Time Consuming: Yupps, it does take time to contribute to the forums and quite often it becomes rather addictive where you’re waiting for new posts and then responding to all of them

3. Strong Opinion: Just like the Noise Factor, you’ll also be dealing a lot of people who will have extremely Strong Opinions. This again can get quite tricky to deal with them because some of them will have a really good convincing way of communication and they can influence your trading decisions. Recent Upside movement of EURUSD during the earlier part of this year was a prime example, a lot of people (who sounded like they have a solid professional experience and they will tell you things like Quantitative Trading Model or how they do not use / like any Indicators or things like they have a strong grip on Fundamentals etc) kept trying to Short EURUSD for several weeks, the reason was obviously quite simple … Strong Opinion. Some of them eventually decided to leave the forum as they couldnt handle the price action going against them for so long. They just couldnt believe that the Euro had any chance of appreciating given its Sovereign Debt problems but what they didnt take into account was that the Fundamentals were working against the Greenback

I am now away from the Forums which means more time for analysis and watching signs for Reversals. While this has definitely helped to trade better but there is an element of being lonely in the world of Trading … I believe at some point, we all have to take some hard decisions whether you can handle what Forums do for you or if you’re better off trading as a Lone Wolf …