Author Bio

Thanks to Samuel Araki, Co-founder of Trading Post Financial Services, for his insightful post last night on the complexities of fostering collaboration between Forex traders. I’d like to add a bit of insight to his analysis of the Currensee community. At Currensee we are all about connecting traders to traders they trust; novice, intermediate, and expert level traders based upon their view of their experience and real time connectivity to major brokers.  When you join the Currensee community (closed-beta signups are open now!) you can complete your profile based upon your own trading experience, habits and style. Traders can chose to collaborate together to enhance their trading experience and leverage the wisdom of the trading community. We are broker agnostic and don’t offer trading advise, and of course we’re compliant with all NFA guidelines.

We consider ourselves unique in the marketplace as the only social networking site for FX traders based upon real-time actual positions. Here is a snapshot of what we will offer when we launch in 2009:

• Join or form virtual trading teams – trade and strategize with peers, share price charts, participate in posts & polls, and gain recognition within trading teams and the community
• Gain powerful market insights – through a new set of social indicators that measure market sentiment, volume, and depth of currency pairs
• Gain recognition within the community based upon actual trading performance

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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex.  Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.

Author Bio

The social networking web sites and solutions has taken off over the past few years. From the niche sites like Sermo.com, to the more popular LinkedIn.com, millions of professionals are turning to these sites to connect, collaborate and network with other professionals they trust.

Unlike relatively basic message boards or forums, these social networking sites have more interactive and real-time features such as profiling, “mini-blogs” and electronic invitations. However, when it comes to the financial trading world, networking has traditionally been limited to physical conferences and events. Over the past few years, this has started to shift online into forums and the blogosphere, but there is still a clear opportunity for a niche social networking site specifically for traders. Currensee is aiming to be just that.

There are over 500,000 active Forex traders participating in a variety of online forums. In the first two years of Forex trading, I myself spent over three hours a day participating in two different professional forums. It started off as a social event, but the more serious I became about my trading, the more my objective changed. Now, my goal is to find traders who I can trust and who can help me with decisions. 

Eventually, I had developed a network of other traders where we could discuss trading positions among our group and ask advice. Should I move the stop loss when I’m making money? Or maybe one of my peers thinks there is a spike moving against me?

However, after a while I found myself less and less involved in the forums. I began to realize how untrustworthy the people I met there might be. For example, I accidentally ran into one of my online peers in a restaurant. He admitted to me (after a few cocktails), that he was still using a demo account and has never traded real money. I was in shock. Part of my decision making was influenced by a guy that is playing with a demo? If I had just known his real profile, I would have factored this into his advice and tried to seek out people I really trusted instead.

Another factor was how “noisy” the forums were becoming. Every time I posted information about a new trade I made, there were always new people I didn’t know asking all kinds of rhetoric questions. Since then I have tried to find forums with closed rooms, but that solution hasn’t always proved effective.

These are all driving forces behind my co-founding Currensee. One of Currensee’s main objectives is to enable traders to build what we call a “Virtual Trading Team” or a professional trading network. You can zoom into other traders’ profiles and make sure these are the people you can trust in making your trading decisions. Finally, a way to really take advantage of the wisdom of your peers.

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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex.  Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.