The Downside To Forex Trading Forums

By John Templeton

The beginning of any forex trading career is always going to be a bit rocky. It's only natural since you are still in the very early stages where everything is brand new to you and you don't really know where to turn. One of the places that most new traders visit are forex forums. For example, forex factory always has thousands of new traders signing up with them everyday.

That's exactly what I did when I first started getting into forex trading. The whole idea of trading the forex market was so perplexing to me that I just needed a place to get my bearings. Forex forums are great for this. There is a lot of content on those sites. The major downside is that most of the content is useless.

You are presented with all of this information, and it's such a shock to the system. You scan all the threads and there are countless posts regarding forex trading systems, trading robots, custom indicators, etc... You feel like the holy grail of trading is somewhere in these pages and if you find it, you are going to be rich. But guess what? All of these "shortcuts" don't add up to anything in the long run.

If you just want to learn the very basics of trading the forex market, like "what is a market order" or something along those lines, then these forums are wonderful for that. But once you start scanning the threads for "the holy grail", then you have ventured way of course. You've lost focus on the long run.

If this is you, you need to look at yourself, and ask "am I just looking for the easy way out?" Because that is all that you are really doing. If would be truly wonderful if something like a holy grail exist, but it doesn't, and just to save you time, I will tell you that it will never exist.

I remember wasting so much time on these forex trading forums, looking for something that would make me rich. After months of doing that, I realized that I had nothing to show for all that time spent. All I had was a bunch of useless gadgets and I knew nothing about the actual market.

Once a trader gets rid of that "shortcut" mentality, then trading becomes a lot easier, and much more profitable. Learn about things like technical analysis and price action, and there is no telling how far you can go when you use traits like subjectivity in your trading arsenal.