Playing the ball and not the man
Most traders and speculators are prone to succumbing too and gravitating towards discussion forums. Trading gossip, news, getting advice, comparing methods and strategies, appraising services and brokers generally form the bulk of the discussion subject matter. Trading forums can provide a welcome break from trading, particularly if you are a day trader waiting for your preferred set up, forums can be both healthy and productive environments.
One overwhelming issue, that appears with inevitable regularity, is an overall suspicion and distrust of the broker. Moving aside the overall lack of logic to these suspicions; if you can’t move past the trust issue you’ll never move on with trading, it’s worth considering just how these myths regarding a lack of trust have taken hold on certain discussion forums..
You have to be highly suspicious of any posters on trading discussion forums who overtly criticise brokers, there is an undeniable rule of return that the more successful you are at trading the less you complain. Therefore it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of complaints originate from the less experienced and therefore less proficient traders. Experienced traders have quite simply moved past the ‘blame game’ and have come to terms with accepting responsibility for their actions. Forum threads critical of brokers generally gather no traction and involvement from experienced traders, most simply ignore the content and complaints.
The specific complaints generally contain one or more of the following criteria; poor and uncompetitive spreads, poor fills, slippage, miss quotes, rejected trades, slow or frozen platform..All of these complaints are simple to address and owe more to the inefficiency of traders as opposed to the inefficiency of the broker.
One curiosity is why you’d share your compliant with complete strangers on a forum rather than address the complaints with the broker? Surely a telephone call to the broker, exchanging e-mails and potentially beginning to create a direct personal relationship with your broker, would be the right route forward as opposed to seeking cathartic comfort from internet strangers?
Given most credible brokers now offer ECN, STP, NDD trading, the transparency of trading has moved on light years during the past decade as internet trading has evolved. To think that we’re still at the birth of this industry is a point worth noting, this industry has actually grown hand in hand with the commercial evolution of the web.
Talk to any trader who traded pre the ‘Internet trading age’ and they’ll cite spreads of twenty five pips on Cable at certain times of the trading day, and telephone dealing was the only game in town. Scalping? Well imagine attempting that over the telephone in 1999 with a twenty five pip spread, it would have been easier signing a blank cheque and handing it over to the market. Yet we now expect it all, even to the point were we demand expert advisors auto trade without fault.
We’re now at a place of evolution of internet trading were we get close on instant execution, the spreads can be less than one pip, (including commission), we can trade with a relatively tiny account size, we get free charting packages, a variety of trading platforms, support from most brokers ranging from educational videos to free seminars..all underpinned by a level of professionalism unmatched in many other industries. Not withstanding this the industry has both self regulated and complied with other regulation to the letter over recent years.
This industry is clean, sound, by accident and design and because of the industry we find ourselves in the technological advances we enjoy come thick and fast on a daily basis as brokers upgrade their service as often as phone manufacturers upgrade their phones and services to entice new customers.
Perhaps next time traders have a genuine grievance they’d be best served taking the compliant direct to the broker. Hating the game and hating the players is a certain route to failure and frustration, loving the game and learning how play the game (perhaps by the brokers’ rules) therefore ‘playing the ball and not the players’ is undoubtedly the right approach.
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