PipStop

Well, get ready because I have a vast stream of thoughts right now, and I'm sure it will result in back-to-back-to-back-to ... well a few separate blog posts, anyway.

Getting to the positively negative thing.

I was on Facebook last night, where I was busy creating a separate profile so as not to mingle all my personal friends with trading world. I still have my name there but the full listing is Samuel Araki-tpfs, and there is a Trading Post logo as the picture.

We started a Trading Post Community group awhile back which was a closed group, but I'm going to create another one here later this week that will be open to all.

The unfortunate thing to me was in wading through the hundreds and hundreds of "Forex" groups, I can count the number of useful ones on one hand. The others are pretty worthless, and that gets those under educated sucked in and down the wrong path - because there is NO easy money in trading - despite the fact that there is a group billing itself as the "Easy Money" group.

And what has happened is the same people post on every wall, it seems, their pitch. Good for them, but what's good for traders? Surely not the cesspool (one of my favorite words - for some odd reason) of garbage Forex groups on Facebook.

More and more there are worthless pitches online. The easy thing is none of us really need to get our crap filter out if we understand that there is no "easy" path in trading consistently.

Sheez. I can't stand a) garbage, and b) people advocating "their" way as the "only" way to success.

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Getting back to social networking to finish.

It's something that I've personally been very bullish about for the past couple of years.

I have a LinkedIn Profile, although I've been meaning to fill it out with more details. I have, as I mentioned above, created a Facebook profile for the trading world - so now I join the 2 Facebook profile club (that isn't against Facebook rules is it?). I also have a Twitter account, which I have been playing with and will probably share in the coming months on PipStop.

I am also the organizer of the Vancouver Forex Meetup group, which is a testing environment of sorts for me to see what traders are looking for, why they're not successful as they could be, and why they are.

What these website do for me is keep me in tune with technology and people. And lo and behold, trading is made up of technology and people. It's finding the relevant aspects of both and helping to create solutions that I love.

I also author about six other blogs, and I've updated 4 of them already this week. And I'm not bragging. I just love to write.

And no, I do have a balance in my life and none of the others are trading related.

What social websites are you involved with?

And please, MySpace is so, yesterday.

Amidst all that was going on last week, I missed this, and I think many others did too, as I didn't see any other bloggers comment on it. Thanks to Robert who forwarded me this news today.

Last Thursday, Phillip Bennett received 16 years in prison for orchestrating the fraud that bilked investors of over $2.4 billion.

With our previous company I was around when the whole Refco situation blew up and it was not pretty. There were many blind traders not really realizing where they were putting their money.

The regulations surrounding brokers has improved, but in the United States at least none of investor funds are insured, while in Canada with the Canadian Investor Protection Fund funds can be eligible to be protected up to $1,000,000.

Too many times traders are focused on the wrong things. I've spoken with traders who want to find the best off-shore broker to do business with. The assumption is that one can then better shield trading profits from the government.

There are other Phillip Bennett's out there. It's just a matter of if you will be caught in the web of fraud or not. Just as in trading, there are no guarantees, but you can minimize your exposure to risk.