Belonging to a great crypto trading community is an amazing thing. It takes away the loneliness of staring at charts, but is also allows you to validate your position and beliefs against your peers; to belong. Furthermore, the community shares insights into potential opportunities you would have never heard about alone and trading techniques you never used before.
Now this is the rub. You are now a part of the herd.
Before I found a herd to call my own I traded alone. I made fantastic decisions and horrible decisions all on my own and I realized extraordinary gains on my initial investment. I also found when I joined the herd I was a contrarian investor. I would have done things differently, but then I started to do the same things as the herd, even if I had my reservations. For example, I started to look at 15 minute charts instead of 4H and 1D. I was becoming easily convinced to make the same decisions as everyone else. The social norms were accepted. When we won big we gave each other high fives, when we lost we consoled each other. The FOMO was real.
This became obviously apparent to me when I had a moment of reflection and I realized I had created my own herds. I have two other herds. Friends and family that started to invest once they saw what was going on in my wallet. I started to feed them the social norms from the herd, - If they have made or lost money based on this advice I don’t know- but I have immediately stopped this practice. We only talk about fundamentals now.
Don’t get me wrong, there are amazing people in these herds; the cream rises to the top. If had met these amazing people much earlier I would have been better equipped to trade and not have made those horrible decisions I made while I was trading alone.
I am not advocating to not participate in crypto trading forums or chats. They are a great source of fundamental information. I am advocating self-awareness. Recognition of oneself as an individual separate from the herd, question everything, and most importantly don’t rush any decision.