One of the main reasons this community was created is to provide a unique experience you won’t find anywhere else. We focus on four things. Journaling, backtesting, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. In this article, we’ll cover the last one in detail, specifically how to behave on our multi-channel trading floor to take advantage of all its benefits.
Let’s start by looking at the initial photo of the article.
Please think about why these people meet every day on this trading floor.
Do you think they’re there:
- To talk about how everyone is doing?
- To throw a few jokes around?
- To distract others with irrelevant information and create an unproductive work environment?
- To entertain their colleagues with a ton of pictures of cute kittens?
- To disturb others with their useless and unhelpful remarks?
Absolutely not!
The number one reason they show up every workday is that they trade for a living. They take their job seriously and approach it responsibly. They understand very well that if they don’t focus and perform well enough, their trading career won’t last very long. They act professionally, help each other, and work together to achieve the common goal of making some money to pay for their bills and living expenses.
And that’s exactly what you should be doing too!
Our ICT Sharks multi-channel trading floor guidelines are designed to maximize the benefits of collaborating with other community members. Their purpose is to convince you that organized, disciplined, and cooperative behavior helps create a productive environment where it is much easier to share knowledge, experience, insights, analysis, or trading ideas.
They exist to prevent the chaotic, fruitless, negative, or toxic discussions that are so often seen in other trading communities.
Each individual guideline has been listed with meticulous care and plays a significant role in the perception of the overall participation experience on our multi-channel trading floor.
Therefore, we ask you to familiarize yourself with them and follow them thoroughly.
As you will see for yourself, these guidelines help create an exceptional culture where the motto “traders helping traders” is not just an empty platitude.
Valuable Posts
Before posting anything to the chat, always ask yourself these two questions first:
- Does my post add any value to the discussion?
- Can other members benefit from it?
If your answer is no, your best option is probably to remain an observer and leave the space for others.
The Correct Way To React
You know those messy discussions, full of posts where it’s not clear what people are reacting to? That’s the real cancer of all chat rooms. Always use the “reply” option on posts you respond to. This will greatly help other members understand the structure of the chat discussion.
This is how it’s supposed to be:
A Better Way Of Emoji Reaction
Look at this image.
Do you see how much space is wasted by emoji-only posts? Not only do they add no value to the discussion, but they also make the chat cluttered. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that important information can get lost as a result of flooding the discussion in this way.
Just look at this mess:
How can this form of post help anyone?
It should be noted that the authors of such posts become hot candidates for a ban.
So, instead of using an emoji-only post, please respond with an emoji directly to a specific post.
Much better, right? 😉
High-Quality Images
Do you like this photo?
Well, if you’re like us, I’m sure you don’t. It is very easy to take a good-quality screenshot on any PC, MAC, or mobile device. So, please don’t send these weird images to the chat.
Charts With Complete Information
Take a look at this screenshot and recognize what you’re looking at.
You don’t know, do you?
Please ensure that your submitted charts always contain complete information, especially the market name (symbol, ticker) and time frame. Also, please help other members understand what they have in front of them and mark everything important on the chart.
Here are some good examples of what this should look like:
No Memes
Yes, this is part of our rules. However, we wanted to explain why it exists.
For the same reason we don’t like emoji-only posts, we don’t want to see memes on our multi-channel trading floor.
Posting memes in these channels is considered a gross violation of our rules and can result in a member’s ban.
Don’t get us wrong, though. We love memes! They are an integral part of chat culture, which is why they are allowed in the general discussion of our Discord server.
We just don’t want our trading channels to look like this.
Dedicated Channels
Our trading floor consists of channels dedicated to sharing intraday trading ideas, analysis, and insights. It is not a place to discuss brokers, prop firms, trading challenges, or technical issues. We strive to share information in our community in an organized manner, so these topics have their dedicated threads on our ICT Sharks forum.
Here is an overview of the threads by topic:
Brokers-related topics and questions – Brokers
Proprietary trading firms and challenges – Proprietary trading firms
Technical issues and platforms-related topics – TradingView, MetaTrader
Short-term/Swing trading ideas – Swing Trade Ideas
Long-term trading ideas – Long-Term Trade Ideas
General discussion – General Discussion (Forum), General Discussion (Chat)
Trading results, trade breakdowns, missing trades – Trading Journals
Weekly bias, analysis, and outlook for the next days – Currencies, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, Bonds
Trading-related topics and questions – Trading
Risk management topics – Risk Management
Psychology topics – Psychology
The Right Way To Share Trading Results
We understand the excitement when you make a winning trade. However, our multi-channel trading floor is not the place where screenshots like these should end up:
…or this
If you decide to share your trading results with other members of our community, please do so via your public trading journal. After all, that is their primary purpose.
Take your winning trade and turn it into a trade breakdown. Show your top-down analysis and explain the reasons that led to your trade entry and exit. You can take a few more screenshots or even make a video! Simply transform an ordinary screenshot of an executed trade into something valuable that others will appreciate. Traders love posts like this!
Saving Chat Space
Many short posts in quick succession are generally considered spamming, and moderators usually punish such behavior. Please avoid making your posts look like this:
Try to fit your message into one or two posts. This will help keep the chat clear and save valuable space for others’ posts.
Positive Atmosphere
We understand that everyone has a bad day from time to time, and things don’t always go well. However, please do not transfer your negative energy to other community members. Take a break from trading, go out for a walk, and think that tomorrow is a new day full of new opportunities! Stay positive and help maintain a good mood on our trading floor.
International Community
Always keep in mind that our members are located all over the world and have varying levels of English proficiency.
So, if you are a native English speaker, try to avoid words, phrases, slang, and abbreviations that you think non-native speakers would have trouble understanding. We are sure that they will appreciate it.
No Personal Discussions
We have all met them before: people who ignore the channel’s topic and have personal discussions regardless of whether anyone cares. This is not only disrespectful to other members of the community, but it is also considered spamming and thus can be punished by our moderators.
Therefore, please use the personal message option for this type of discussion to avoid potential penalties.
Auto-Moderation Function
Please note that our multi-channel trading floor is subject to automatic moderation. Posts containing words from the following list are automatically deleted.
- Broker
- Broker Name (Forex.com, BlackBull Markets, XTB,…)
- Prop firm
- Prop firm name (Apex, FTMO, My Funded Futures,….)
- Challenge
Please do not try to circumvent this function with various word combinations. Otherwise, you risk being kicked off the server or banned completely.
Okay, that’s it!
We hope that you now understand that the above guidelines do not exist to restrict you in any way. Their only purpose is to keep the discussion fruitful and organized. They are here to help you better share knowledge and experience. So, please follow them and do your part to ensure that they are respected.
Thank you.
