Back in the olden days, before iPhones and social media took over the world, the best way to chat to other traders was through internet forums.

Now these forums were a bit hit and miss. Some of them were plagued with bullying and name-calling, some of them weren’t worth the pixels on your screen (full of nonsense and bad advice), but one or two were actually worth some merit.

Anyway, in this one forum I used to visit most of the material was decent quality stuff. And it attracted a cast of characters you might expect…

There were a few seasoned veteran traders. There were the up and coming newbies. There were a few jokers and jesters. And there was our resident know-it-all. Let’s call him ‘Norman’.

A nasty piece of work

Everyone knows a Norman, right?

Whenever anyone suggested a trading method, Norman was there to pooh-pooh it. He’d seen and done it all before.

If someone had an idea about a specific trade, Norman was straight on to criticise it. And he took great delight in posting ‘I told you so’ messages if the trade didn’t work out.

Oh, he was a nasty piece of work. You could literally taste his arrogance and condescension oozing through your computer screen.

So when a few of the members had finally had enough, and challenged him to prove how good his own options trading system was (he’d been crowing about it for months), it attracted a lot of attention.

Norman took the bait. He announced he would post all his trades in advance.

And true to his word he did. His system didn’t seem bad either. It traded options in such a way that he collected small amounts of money (the premium that buyers pay) on a regular basis. And 99% of the time he made a bit of profit.

But… his exposure to risk also meant there was a rogue 1% chance of things going spectacularly wrong.

So you can guess what happened next: a once in a lifetime ‘perfect storm’ of market events blew up in his face and took him to the cleaners, in full view of the forum.

It was almost as if the market knew what he was up to, disliked his smugness as much as everyone else, and dished out a bit of punishment!

Don’t be like Norman

So for goodness sake, if you’ve got a good thing going don’t be a Norman. Don’t put yourself onto a pedestal. You’re just asking to get knocked off.

But if you do have some useful knowledge and experience why not share it with care and humility?

Like we do over in the Forex Breakthrough Academy.

I lead the way with the teaching materials and the trading assignments, and then we’ve got our own private dedicated forum where all members can share their findings and ideas.

It’s all about helping traders learn their craft in a most healthy and nurturing way. I’ll tell you more about how to sign up in the coming weeks.