Social media has changed how people communicate, share and connect all around the world.
It’s something unique to only this generation and has resulted in numerous changes in the world in various industries and is very much present in the financial trading industry.
Many traders often wonder how they can connect with other traders to not just socialize but also:
- Share strategies
- Learn from each other
- Pick up on trends
The good news is that there are social networks for traders and they come in the form of social trading platforms.
There are a number of social trading platforms out in the market and while each of them has something that makes them different from the others, they are all centered on one main theme and that’s connecting traders.
These connections allow these traders to share insights, strategies, tips and more.
TradingView
This is, perhaps, the best possible alternative of Facebook for traders. The main feature of TradingView.com is an ability to plot great charts. This has quickly resulted in a great popularity of the tools, and then, it became a place where traders no only preview the charts, but share their ideas and engage in discussions.
By now, this platform collects dozens of thousands of users. You may, of course, tell that such an amount of users is actually incomparable to what Facebook is. Yes, this is right, yet an important things to remember is that that TradingView does not target everyone, but mostly is designed for day traders in stock, commodity and currency markets.
The main disadvantage of this platform is rather simple – lack of action. While the app does a great job when it comes to generating discussions, it is still not possible to easily trade the ideas of the people you follow. And this is why we are taking a look at another platform, something that provides much more possibilities for acting.
Collective2
One such platform is Collective2 which to date has almost 20,000 traders and 60,000 strategies. Read more at official Collective2 review.
There are two types of people on Collective2 and they are:
- Strategy Developers
- Trade Followers
How it works is that Strategy Developers/Trade Leaders create strategies which are listed on the website for Trade Followers to follow.
Strategy Developers/Trade Leaders have to pay Collective2 $120 every six months and if they add an extra trade in a month then they have to pay $102.
Besides this, Strategy Developers can set the prices for their Strategies. This has both an up and a downside because some Strategy Developers set their strategies extremely high and others set them at an affordable/low cost.
The Trade Followers subscribe to the Developers’ strategies but are offered a 7 day free trial before they have to pay, this is used to determine if a strategy is suitable.
Anyone can become a Strategy Developer/Trader Leader; in fact Collective2 encourages more experienced and competent traders to do this because it’s another stream of income for the Trade Developers.
As a Trade Developer you also receive a number of tools which enable you to manage your subscribers, your prices, you can even send out special discounts and private messages to subscribers.
Collective2 also has forums for Trade Followers and a plus is that Trade Followers can write reviews on any trading strategy they wish. This is how you can learn about a trading strategy before testing it out yourself which saves you time in the long run.
You can also link your Facebook and/or Twitter account to your Collective2 account.
Collective2’s Technology
The main feature of Collective2 is what is known as AutoTrading.
How this works is that it allows you to choose any system available on Collective2’s website you want and that system’s trades automatically appear in your live brokerage account.
This is how you receive the information from the trading strategies you follow and ultimately use.
Everything considered social trading platforms are a great alternative to traditional brokers and even a great addition to your list of brokers if you are a client of many. Social trading, just like social media has changed how people share and communicate and will continue to do in times to come.
There are more trading platforms to take a look at: Sirix, eToro and various custom-made platforms. We will take a better look at those in the next article.