If your method is good others' opinions should only help you. The two kinds of people you want to avoid are people who don't know what they're doing who think they do - the unconsciouscly incompatent - and negative people. Most offices have many of both. If you can find a good environment with people who share ideas it should be very rewarding. The way I see it is that sometimes I will see a situation where there is a high probability of success on a trade, or at least excellent risk reward (a good setup) where I don't intend on taking all the available liquidity. Perhaps there's $2400 on the table with $1200 of risk and I only want to risk $200 to make $400. If I tell 4 other guys who each get in and make an extra $400, no money is lost to me and it's no harder to maneuver out of the position. If the four guys whom I made $400 for, each throw one trade/day at me, and on average I make $100 from each guy's idea that's an extra $100,000/year. Whether you're doing this in an office or via skype or AIM or however is really unimportant. Sometimes when I'm down and someone who has a style different from mine but so different that I can't trade it throws a good idea my way it helps me gain back my mental trading mojo. I can't put up the same p/l by myself as I can when trading with others, and since I know that I try very hard to make sure I don't gain dependancy on other people for my ideas. Just because someone throws money at me I don't allow it to decrease the amount of work I put in on my own trading. I try my hardest to be prepared for a scenario where I am forced to trade in complete isolation and where my main strategies all die. It will happen.
I agree it is nice to have a social circle but why pay for it? Try and develop friends who have an interest in trading or network locally within your community. I am just saying avoid pay trading groups as a general rule, they usually don't help.
I see what you are saying but I personally wouldn't want my trading dependent on others info/knowledge (at the moment of pulling the trigger) or their participation as the means of being successful or not. I like the idea of traders chatting about situations after the fact and what they saw, how they felt ect. I guess for me, in the moment, I prefer being alone.
The counter-argument is that you can't trade by committee. Lots of people work alone in different fields - novelists, artists, private investigators, hunters, pilots, single-handed sailors, adventurers etc. Being alone allows you to focus entirely on the matter at hand, without some fat pizza-munching wannabe distracting you with BS about the latest sport results or celebrity gossip. I've traded both in an office and at home, and i have to say that a busy office is the WORST environment to trade in. So much noise and distraction. IMO the best environment is with 1 or 2 other *good* traders. Then you benefit from some teamwork, two sets of eyes for news, market moves etc, but you don't get much distraction. It is however rather difficult to find 1 or 2 other skilled professional traders for this kind of setup.
Swordsman, I started trading seriously in March with no real training and to have some guidance with professional traders is great! I don't follow it blindly and am even a contributor to the site now, not just a parasite... There's no way I could have learned everything I have in such a short amount of time without them.
I could not agree more. I'd add that if you have a few other reliable guys outside of your team of 2-3 who every so often send you an IM with a trade or a stock, you have the best possible environment for a trader.