What Is a Trading Community?
A trading community is exactly how it sounds… well, almost. These communities are typically based on a social platform that creates a network of retail traders at just about every level. It is where knowledge and strategy are shared, and community members thrive together.
Many trading communities are sprawling all over the internet these days and are in just about every social network. These communities vary in scale and accessibility. Some are elite clubs, some are fee-based, and some are free.
What to Expect Out of a Trading Community
For the most part, trading communities are built to be a resource for new traders to learn from those with knowledge and experience. Some communities also cater to those seeking advanced knowledge in trading.
Beginners can usually find a free community to learn basic swing and options trading. Advanced options trading, day trading, and futures trading communities are often found to have some membership fee. These fees can be anywhere from $50 to $1,000 per month.
You will have to research to decide if any fee-based trading communities are worth it. Generally, the fee-based communities will provide live streaming services and sometimes two-way voice communication for live education.
What to Look Out For
Whether you have searched the topic with your favorite search engine (here’s looking at you, Google!) or just happened to be reading our blog, you are reading this article for a reason. Let’s get to the point and talk about what makes a great stock trading community.
It is hard to find a large group of like-minded people to build an in-person trading community, so ultimately, social networking is the answer. Social networking provides a platform to share knowledge and experience. Facebook groups and online forums are just communities centered around a platform designed to keep you on it. They show ads from the platform (not necessarily the community mods ads, but Facebook ads in general!).
The bottom line is that a trading community is made up of the people in it. The people are the most important part, and that includes you.
It’s all about the people who build a good trading community. These folks are key in developing a set of administrators and moderators to maintain the quality of the community. They have many roles in keeping the community clean, engaging, friendly, and thriving. Sometimes this is a hard task, and some communities do a better job than others. But a challenge it is, nonetheless!
Also, learning material is a must; even free communities must have a good amount of resources available. Facebook and online forums are great places to meet, talk stocks, and even store content; however, they are not great for live communication and streaming. There are much better platforms for this out there. This leads me to my next point…
Trading Community Discord
There are many trading community Discords because they provide a lot of what a good trading community needs. Discord does provide live streaming; however, it has limited attendance capability for the time being. $ZM (Zoom) is currently one of the best live-stream platforms. However, the developers of Discord are hot on their heels. Especially since $MSFT (Microsoft) now owns Discord.
A Discord server is quite intuitive and is an easy platform for a new user to learn. It is also easy for an administrator to set up. There is a built-in place to store resources and learning material. There is a way to build many chat and voice channels within the server, providing diversity and organization. One server can cater to traders at any level of experience.
What to Expect in the Content
It doesn’t matter if you are learning to buy and sell shares or opening and closing complex options strategies. True traders never stop learning. You should expect extensive trading information and resources to be consistently added to the content library.
Whether the blog content or trading discord server content, there should be plenty of reading material and videos explaining everything from chart analysis to trading strategy. There should also be trade ideas or (alerts) with details such as direction and price targets. Combining real-world live stream analysis “as it happens” and studying videos before or after the trading bell is the best approach to learning!
What Should the Chat be Like?
The chat in a trading community is the stage for everything from new traders asking questions to screenshots with chart analysis of trade setups. The chat in a good trading community should flow with moderators answering questions and sharing research.
The back-and-forth conversations should be the best part. When newer traders ask questions and the moderators provide great answers, it is there for all to see. This is how a trading community thrives together.
How Awesome Is Live Streaming?
Every fee-based trading community should have live streaming services. Live streaming is a great tool for presenters to provide a live trading screen while explaining chart setups and trading strategies. This can be used for providing both long-term and short-term trading and investing strategies.
The live-streaming services almost exclusively provided by fee-based trading communities are the main reason people sign up. This is where the moderators and presenters get to show their stuff.
With live streaming, the main attraction tends to be day trading. Day trading is becoming vastly attractive to new traders, and the presenters must be on point with price action analysis. A good fee-based trading community will have a variety of day trading streams running at the same time. Presenters in each day trading stream will focus on specific markets, from futures to penny stocks and large caps.
Other day trading streams will have presenters focusing on simple and complex options strategies. More advanced yet newish traders begin to understand the fundamentals of maximizing leverage while minimizing risk in these day trading streams.
Swing trading streams are less popular. However, they are great places for new traders with busy schedules to learn how to trade more passively while they work or are otherwise occupied during market hours. Swing trading streams are also usually held in the evenings allowing members to set up limit orders for the following day. Typically webinars are the medium of choice for teaching swing trading and happen less frequently.
What's the next step?
Trading communities are an awesome resource for those new to trading, advanced traders, and everyone. Finding the right community for you can take time and effort with the number of choices available on the web. Narrowing down the choices will take a bit of research. You should read a few reviews and look into the people running them. Since most of them are built on social media platforms, they will often have a Facebook page that is free to join or follow. From there, you’ll be able to reach out to moderators and members alike. Get to know the people; a trading community is made of people. Find out who the moderators are. Get to know them, and make friends!
What is their background? What is their trading style or focus? What level are they at? Are they working a day job and trading passively, or are they trading for a living?
That last one may be a little personal, but most moderators are happy to share. I am a moderator and have been an automotive mechanic for nearly 20 years. Now I am transitioning into trading for a living, but for now, I find myself looking for a part-time afternoon job to bridge the gap.
Some of the moderators in our trading community are trading for a living, and some are self-employed. We have moderators at nearly every level of trading experience. The truth is that the moderators in every trading community are growing with you, constantly learning and honing new skills. They are always students of the market. Their willingness and ability to teach others while they are on their trading journey are both humbling and rewarding. It truly warms my heart to help people learn how to trade profitably, which is what a trading community is all about.
**Jeremy, a Bullish Bears Moderator, wrote this article. Feel free to contact him anytime in our Trading Discord and say hello.
