Question: why are you here on FF?

Hello, even if I'm not particularly active on the ff community, I visit regularly this website, and spend time reading forums etc.

Then a question arises to my mind, why?
What can you get from this website:

1) the ff calendar --- pretty useful tool
2) the "breaking news" --- pretty useless and deceiving, but a good "entertainment" in this damn boring job
3) various "systems" threads --- same as for breaking news
4) funny threads and entertaining posts, like the ones with cartoons etc --- funny!

So, after a strict analysis of the value of ff, looks like its mostly about entertainment, and a thumbs up for the calendar.

This is my own thoughts of course, what about you?

I started using FF's calendar way before I subscribed as a Forum member, about 7 years ago.

At the time I was barely starting but my trading was going quite smoothly (beginner's luck ... ) and was fully dedicated to trade, read and learn here and there, but completely on my own.

By seeing the date I registered, I can see I did it around the time I started experiencing heavy losses and thus many doubts arising, that's when the "pain" of not being able to share my "job issues" with other people in my day-to-day surroundings moved me to belong to the members' group.

Although it is a virtual environment, we get to meet very interesting people, and I have learned a lot from many of them, also by trying several systems, some useful, some not so good, and also sharing my views and experiences. Especially the fact that everyone around is working on the same ground and trying to achieve similar goals, is really important to me as sometimes just watching charts up and down can become quite unreal as around me nobody knows (and usually it is tough for them to understand) what do I do daily in front of a monitor with red and green candlesticks all around ...

Nowadays I feel I'm a part of the FF family, have seen good and not so good people come and go, miss a lot of the old-timers and have to confess I spend most of my time on the Lounge and AUD/USD thread as this is the only pair I actually trade practically (and now the Aussie cartoon thread), sometimes sharing my views, others just having a relaxing moment between trades. I don't check the systems threads anymore unless a thread title catches my attention, barely read news but still use the calendar actively. And whenever I think I can be of help with a reply or comment, I do.

Indeed this can become a boring job especially when having a working system in place, but it's nice to gather around other traders, if only to keep spirits uplifted!

I'm here for the gossip

Initially when I joined, I did it mostly to read the Forums (particularly Systems threads) and to check FF's Calendar.

I still do these except that I also read the other Forum categories as well, particularly Platform Tech (to harvest bits and pieces of code for use in my own indicators), and Trading Discussion.

Re: breaking news, I have my own Twitter feed for that, but FF's news is a pretty good counterpoint to check against, plus I think FF's the best FX-related fundamental news aggregator.

In Systems, I tend to look in "price action" -related threads for tips to incorporate in my own trading.

Despite having loads of experience trading FX for banks, I think I've learnt a lot (and still can learn) from retail traders on FF.

So in "giving back", I tend to gravitate towards threads that require the inputs and perspectives of a grizzled former institutional trader (like me).

because i don't have anything productive to do with my time obviously....joking

i visit to exchange opinions and different views on different market-related topics