By the way, i wrote this back in 2009 describing the characters on elitetrader On the eve of Samhain or Halloween for those of you without a Celtic bent; I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the various creatures inhabiting stock investing forums on the internet. From the serious discussions on nuclearphynance.com and Willmott.com to Wall Street's infamous gossip site, elitetrader.com, there exist distinct categories of posters. Many traders use these sites for stock tips and picks, market wisdom, getting the latest scoop, news, and even simple entertainment and humor. Whether you are a weathered skipper of these financial forums or a brand new investor who will look for the first time as soon as you finish this article, it's smart to know the major categories of participants who provide the information both good and bad, nonsense or invaluable. These sites are chock full of free information but its important to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. The most harmless posters are those who I call the bulls or bears depending on their stance. These normally nice and friendly posters are simply talking their book. For example, if they are long a particular stock they will post glowing reviews, bullish technical analysis charts, positive news stories and/or anything to get you on their side and hopefully jump on board with them helping to push the stock higher. Of course, the opposite would be the bear who will post whatever they feel is needed to deflate the stock price. Some true, some not true. While the bull and bear type can make entertaining reading, it's important to always keep in mind that they are generally only pushing their agenda. Some can have amazing information and tactics that can truly help you in your trading. Others may not even be as knowledgeable as you, so it's critical to read carefully to discern the worthwhile bulls/bears from the merely entertaining. The next and more insidious denizen of these forums is the internet troll. Troll types exist all over the internet in chat rooms, forums and basically anywhere they can disrupt a legitimate conversation. This creature is definitely not only limited to finance forums but financial sites seem to have more than their fair share. The troll can be easily recognized as someone who will insert inflammatory and generally nonsensical arguments within a normal written conversation. Some of these trolls will even contradict themselves from topic to topic in an effort to stir things up and cause chaos among the legitimate site users. They are normally users with high post counts who provide very little actual information in their contributions. Trolls will post disparaging and often downright nasty comments in multiple threads for the simple purpose of upsetting other users. A few hours spent perusing various financial sites will reveal multiple troll like personalities. Ignoring and not engaging these chaos lovers is the best course of action. The final and most dangerous broad category of poster is the finance ghoul. Ghouls have an agenda to mislead and confuse you. Unlike simple trolls, ghouls can be intelligent sounding and are difficult to identify without much experience on a particular site. Look for strange or difficult to understand verbiage, often within scientific sounding prose. Some ghouls are simply misled souls who really mean no harm, but can lead you down the rabbit hole of misinformation. Others seem to genuinely like to confuse and obfuscate simple issues in an effort to appear superior since they understand the topic and you do not. The dangerous thing about ghouls is they can appear to know what they are talking about while it is actually simple nonsense. While reading or posting on a finance forum, keep alert for anyone who seems to answer your questions or contributes with pseudo academic or scientific words that really make no sense when taken in context. You may be dealing with a ghoul.