When trading, one of the best ways to learn and keep in the know is by connecting with like-minded traders. One issue that I myself have is knowing just where to look for those people, so I started looking for some sites where I would be able to connect and have discussions about the current market. One website that stuck out to me a lot was Forex Factory, which I will talk about in this article.
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What is Forex Factory?
Forex Factory was created by Fair Economy Inc mainly to help traders connect with other traders for industry discussions. The main focus of the discussions was for traders to learn key takeaways from others that would positively influence their trading decisions and goals. Along with teaching traders useful new techniques and information, Forex Factory also works carefully to know signs of any threats that traders may face that could negatively affect their trades.
Forex Factory prides itself on being the go-to website for traders to find the purest and most insightful trading information. All information on the site is available to every trader around the world at the exact same time.
What does Forex Factory offer?
Forex Factory offers a vast amount of information on the site, which can be accessed by any trader of any trading level. When you enter the site, you will see the following sub-elements shown below in the picture. Further on I will explain what each sub-element offers.
Forums
If you’re looking to have discussions with real life traders, forums is the place for you. Once you have clicked on the forums section, you will be able to explore 8 different sub-forums, which each cover a different topic. The forums you can participate in are:
- Interactive Trading
- Trading Systems
- Trading Discussion
- Platform Tech
- Broker Discussion
- Trading Journals
- Rookie Talk
- Commercial Content
Once you click on a sub-forum that interests you, all you need to do to participate is to sign up for an account. This only takes a couple of minutes and just requires a valid email address to begin. However, even without an account, you can still access and read the discussions. What I found great about the trading forums was that there really was a sense of community on them, and everyone was willing to answer any questions you might have. Along with this sense of community, just about every trading area you can think of has already been created, making it easy for you to jump right in to the discussion.
Trades
Just as the name suggests, if you’re looking for key trade information, you can find it all under this section. Once you click on this section, you can see a list of major currencies and their live results. There were two key features here which I really enjoyed. The first was that you can easily filter through the currencies as seen below in the image.
The second feature was the monthly leaderboard, which shows who has the best results with their trades. Whilst this may make some traders question why their own trades are not doing as well, I saw it as an opportunity to learn from their tactics, which is really what the site is all about! Along with the leaderboard results, you can also see the username of the person who has the highest trade, which I think presents a great learning opportunity to get some useful and helpful tips from them to use in your own trades.
News
I will be completely honest, most news sections don’t appeal to me all that much, but I found the news section on Forex Factory extremely useful. Once I had clicked on the news tab, I could immediately see the newest stories, and, believe me, these are extremely up to date and are continuously being updated with new stories. In addition to the newest stories, you can also see the hottest stories. Personally I enjoyed the hottest stories, as these were the ones I found most relevant. As you can see below, even the hottest stories are updated on a regular basis, meaning you will never miss any news that could affect your trades.
Another major benefit for me was the ability to search news stories based on their impact. This was something which I think is excellent for beginner traders, as they can get an idea of which trades in their strategy they should make adjustments to. The only negative I found was that this specific filter was only a small side function at the bottom of the page, and I do think this would be more useful at the top.
Calendar
An economic calendar is extremely important for traders. Whilst I have read reviews of other users liking this economic calendar, it wasn’t my personal favourite. I actually preferred the Babypips calendar which I talked about in my review here, but this is just personal preference. The calendar allows you to easily see impact and the actual, forecast and previous results along with the graphs like I have shown below.
Whilst the graphs in the economic calendar are great and allow you to see old data, I personally found the layout not to be the most visually pleasing, but, again, this is just my personal preference and I would still highly recommend users check it out.
Market
The market section allows you to see what is currently happening on the financial markets as well as on three additional markets:
- Metal
- Energy
- Crypto
On the market section I could easily filter which currencies I wanted to have a look at along with set the time range to show updates by 1 minute, 5 minutes, every hour, every four hours, daily and monthly. Along with this, I could change the lines and indicators as you can see below.
One common occurrence I did notice on the market section was that the section often simply wouldn’t load and I would have to refresh the page multiple times in order to see it. This was extremely frustrating and did put me off using this as a market resource site. If you also have this issue, I recommend refreshing the page and the issue should fix itself.
Brokers
Ever wondered what broker you should open a live or demo account? This section can help you easily see a list of brokers along with additional information such as regulators, platforms, minimum deposit and base currency used. This is a fantastic way to find the next broker you want to trade with and quickly filter for exactly what you are looking for in a broker. I highly recommend using this section.
What stands out about Forex Factory?
For me personally, what really stood out for me was the real sense of community on the site.I was able to view information from traders and easily ask questions, which is something I find a lot of websites lack.
Along with the sense of community, they also have a section where you can contact the Forex Factory team and leave some feedback about the website; you can even request a new feature. I really liked this and it did make me feel like the site truly care about maximising the trader’s experience on the site.
Whilst I haven’t used this feature myself, I have read reviews of other users praising the customer support, so if you have a suggestion, do send it to them, as they really do seem to listen.
What did I enjoy most about Forex Factory?
For me, the best feature, other than the forums which I can’t speak highly enough about, was the news section. The ability to get all the latest news and filter by importance and the impact it would have on your trades was an element I really enjoyed. This feature is definitely one I would recommend to beginner traders, so they can really learn just how much the news can affect their trades.
Online reviews of Forex Factory
The online reviews for Forex Factory all seem to praise the economic calendar and the sense of community on the site. Whilst the economic calendar personally wasn’t my favourite element, I can see why others would love it.
What skill would I recommend Forex Factory to?
I would recommend this site to any skill level, due to the wide range of functions it has. Beginners would be able to take advantage of the news section to see the impact that news can have on their trades by being able to easily search and filter the news; the forum section would also be useful for beginners to ask questions.
More advanced users would also enjoy the forum section, but I do think the economic calendar is likely what they will most enjoy, as it is a feature widely loved by most traders.
How would I rate Forex Factory?
To sum up Forex Factory, I’m going to rate the site on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the best) based on 3 elements: ease, information and entertainment.
Ease – I’ll give the site 4 out of 5. Even though the site was easy to use, I did think some features should be highlighted more prominently, such as being able to filter the news by impact on trade.
nformation – I’ll easily give this 5 out of 5 for the forums and news feature. The forums are amazing for being able to build a sense of community and get real-life answers, and the news is also extremely up to date. These two features are the reason I would recommend the site to other traders. I would also agree with the reviews and recommend checking out the economic calendar, as it is extremely useful to use.
Entertainment – I’ll give this 3 out of 5. Whilst the site had some enjoyable forums and news articles, it doesn’t have the same level of entertainment as other sites such as Babypips. That being said, I do acknowledge that Babypips is a hard one to match when it comes to entertainment.
Overall, I highly enjoyed some of the features that Forex Factory offers such as the news and forum section, so I recommend you try it out for yourself. You can also follow them on Facebook and especially their Twitter, which they update extremely frequently, for daily market updates.
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