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First things first. Why would you need to join a community, forum, or chat group?
Here’s why:
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To learn the basics, if you are a newbie
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Get online help with difficulties and concepts
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Save money by learning from others’ mistakes
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Reap psychological benefits (reminder of how much you don’t know/keep your ego in check/how experienced traders deal with losses/etc)
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Avail instant information on topics or stocks of interest to you
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Benefit from a 360-degree viewpoint – get all the pros-and-cons instantly
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Get a feel for market sentiment
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Generate fresh ideas for trading or investing
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Make money through copy-paste. Yes, some social trading networks can actually help you make money by hitching your trades to a successful trader
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Enjoy friendship and camaraderie, because trading and investing can sometimes get lonely
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Develop your own reputation, and then monetize it
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Best of all…the above benefits usually come for free!
There are a host of communities and forums out there that you can join, and get this…there is very little to lose, and mostly to gain from sharing and exchanging ideas.
Of course, you can lose on a trade recommended on an online board, but the key questions are: did you risk management work? How did others on the forum do on the same trade? Most important, how did the expert forum trader fare on that trade? Remember, you can put 10 traders in a room and get them to enter exactly the same transaction. But they will close that same trade with dramatically different results. What did the top performers do differently?
These are the kind of tips and tricks that you can pick up in a community.
To explain in a slightly different way, let me digress from the financial markets and refer to one of the most successful online communities of all time: TripAdvisor, the travel forum.
TripAdvisor (TA) is the go-to place for user-generated reviews on hotels, things-to-do, restaurants and a travel forum dedicated to the destination you’re looking up. Now I’m a pretty seasoned traveller, and the one thing I’ve found is that it helps no end by referring to the wealth of knowledge, opinions and tips available on the site. This free-to-use trove of information helps you to plan tours efficiently, keep safe, save money and live well when travelling to a new place.
Come to think of it, those are pretty much the same objectives when you want to buy a new stock! A trade plan, risk management, a good entry point and a generous profit.
Now that we understand how helpful an online community (any kind) can prove to be, let’s look at some of the top online financial communities that a trader or investor can use with a focus of communities that are an alternative to StockTwits.
Full Discloser: Hashtag Investing is itself a community for stock investors. The intent of this post is to spread light on other communities as well as each have their own unique characteristic. If you own a community and would like it listed please contact us.
eToro
Top 13 Best Stocktwits Alternatives You Should Use
eToro is one of the largest trading platforms with over 6 million customers globally. Tradable assets include stocks, cryptos, CFDs, commodities, forex, ETFs, and indices (via CFDs). The platform offers margin trading to its clients.
eToro propelled higher in the global sweepstakes after it introduced social trading. Social trading allows a trader to copy the trading strategies of other, successful traders on the eToro platform. You can search and locate traders suited to your own risk profile.
There is a separate Editor’s choice section which presents Popular Investors – successful members of the eToro community.
More engagement with the community is possible through eToro’s personalized Social News Feed. This Feed helps you track the stocks or instruments and traders you like, interact with fellow members of the eToro community, participate in discussions and more.
You are allowed to post your own updates (and even tag the instruments or people you’re sharing on the feed), share posts, and comment on others’ posts. Over time, this feed would be customized in accordance with your trading preferences.
eToro allows traders to use the technical analysis features on its platform and create charts that can be shared anywhere.
However, educational resources appear to be scanty.
Trade2Win
Trade2Win has been in existence since 15 years. “We provide an environment that enables our members to converse with one another, share their knowledge and express their views,” the website claims.
Another stated objective is to educate traders through educational and thought-provoking content.
The website is organized into separate tabs for Forums, Articles, Reviews, Events, Book and Members.
Forums, Articles and Reviews have a solid amount of interesting and educational content.
EliteTrader
EliteTrader is a forum for financial traders. At last visit, the forum boasted of 94,927 traders and 247,109 discussion threads containing 4,259,029 posts.
The site is organized into Forums, Resources, Brokers, Software and Members.
Resources include brokerage firms, trading platforms, forex brokers, education, crypto exchanges, stock scanners, prop firms, real-time news / squawk, trade logging & analysis.
This is a very practically oriented community, and offers value in the wealth of resources that an investor or trader would need to up their game.
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a financial website aimed at investors. Its content is crowd-sourced from a number of sources including traders, stock analysts, economists, financial advisors and industry experts.
Individual and corporate contributors total 16,400, while their content contributions are curated by a 56-person team of editors.
The Seeking Alpha community interacts on over 8,000 stock tickers and related content includes news, opinions, discussion, articles and earnings transcripts.
The free portion of the website is organized around the four tabs of Portfolio, People, News and Analysis.
The ‘Marketplace’ segment comprises premium research and private communities.
This site is not entirely suitable for the newbie investor, because most of the content is geared towards a somewhat advanced audience.
Hashtag Investing
Hashtag Investing is a much younger community as it was only started a couple years back. Hashtag Investing is focused on creating a smaller, higher quality network of stock investors to share on a modern platform.
The platform allows for forum discussions, live group chats similar to stock investing WhatsApp group chats, polls, fully mobile functions and upcoming mobile applications.
Hashtag Investing is continually partnering with other service providers like Benzinga, Suredividend, ValueWalk and more in order to bring its members big discounts on premium services. The website is currently free to join but does require an application.
The Motley Fool
The Motley Fool’s forum is called The CAPS Community.
“This revolutionary service pools the resources of the Motley Fool Community to help you identify the best stocks at the best times to buy them — and which stocks to avoid,” states the site.
Members (players) make predictions of stock prices, and the site marks these predictions against actual market prices. Players thereupon receive an accuracy percentage indicating how often they made correct predictions and a score, which is the percentage by which their prices beat the S&P 500.
What’s more, based on these readings, each player is given a percentile rating depending on the percentage of people that player is outperforming. Similarly, stocks get CAPS ratings too (which are updated every five minutes), and these are a valuable indicator of the prevailing bullish or bearish sentiment.
Stockaholics
Stockaholics is a stock forum site that features contests, forums, members and group tabs.
Forum topics include the stock market, stock message boards, penny stocks, Canadian stocks message boards, forex, international stock markets, trade journals, investing, personal finance, futures, bitcoin etc.
Statistics for members include messages posted, likes received, and trophy points.
TheLion.com
TheLion.com is a stock forum. Members can create their own portfolio of buys or shorts and its performance will be highlighted on the forum.
The blog section carries latest news submitted by community members. The blogs are given a ranking based on number of views.
A user section displays the most recent posts from the top ranked users.
“TheLion.com is all about web 3.0 – the process of achieving one’s own financial goals and satisfaction in life,” says the site.
Tradingview.com
The IDEAS page of tradingview.com is a place for stock price predictions, market analyses, and educational material.
The IDEAS page is split between Trading Ideas and Educational Ideas.
Make no mistake – this is a technical analysis heavy site. The trading IDEAS page covers currencies, stocks or futures, which can be analysed with reference to chart patterns, harmonic patterns or wave analysis. Also included are ideas on trading psychology, trade plans and risk management.
On Education the site says: “Absorb the knowledge of fellow users from the community, try it out, test it and apply what works for you. It is a great way to grow your understanding of and skills at trading and it will support you to get your trading to the next level.”
Online Traders’ Forum
Online Traders’ Forum is an established community site with an emphasis on trading education.
Main tabs are forums, trading books, trading courses, trading services and members.
Unfortunately, the trading books, courses and services sections are not being updated, with latest entries showing from 2014.
The site also has a somewhat dated look.
Babypips
Babypips stands tall as the go-to site for forex education, with the added facility to network within a community of traders.
The Babypips School of Pipsology is a free online forex course. The site also carries forex news, trading strategies and market strategies.
Here’s their (humour-laced) mission:
“BabyPips.com exists to protect newbie traders from losing all their money in the forex market either from their own poor trading decisions or from the Brotherhood of Evil Marketing Wizards, the Forex’s equivalent of snake oil salesmen who lure the innocent with foolish claims of easy money and holy grails.”
The Babypips forex forum is well-structured and categorized into Beginner questions/Trading discussion/Trading systems/Community/Broker discussion/Trading tech and tools/Bitcoin talk and cryptocurrencies/Global markets/Commercial content/The Lobby.
The forum is active and regularly populated with new members, threads and posts.
StockRants
StockRants says it is a new breed of stock market forum that has a unique reputation system unlocking hidden features.
“By joining our free investors group you will have access to post stock picks, private messages, downloads and can begin accumulating points for access to our private VIP area.” So, an interesting concept that rewards you for participation.
StockRants Statistics: Threads 7,361; Posts 39,087; Members 12,638
ForexFactory
At the time I visited ForexFactory, it showed there were 13,314 traders online at that moment. The site features Forums/Trades/News/Calendar/Market/Brokers.
The trades tab is a running feed giving performance of the live trades by forum members. It also gives an interesting long/short positioning of forum traders across eight major forex pairs.
The brokers tab is a table of broking companies giving their trading conditions and spreads computed and updated in real time.
The site is geared towards experienced forex traders. The trading systems section had 2,969 threads with 1.2 million replies.
Forex Factory is one of the largest forex forums in the world.
Conclusion
Which is the right forum for you? That depends upon your specific position in the trading and investing journey. If you’re starting out, Babypips would be ideal. That’s because these forums are helpful and educative (also, no trolls!). Trade2Win is an excellent option for newbies. More experienced investors could consider Elitetrader, Forexfactory, Hashtag Investing, and Motley Fool.
This Options Discord Chat is The Real Deal
While the internet is scoured with trading chat rooms, many of which even charge upwards of thousands of dollars to join, this smaller options trading discord chatroom is the real deal and actually providing valuable trade setups, education, and community without the noise and spam of the larger more expensive rooms. With a incredibly low-cost monthly fee, Options Trading Club (click here to see their reviews) requires an application to join ensuring that every member is dedicated and serious about taking their trading to the next level. If you are looking for a change in your trading strategies, then click here to apply for a membership.