Watching the activity on our newly redesigned community site has been really exciting. We had big plans for all the new features we introduced, so it’s gratifying to see our members kick the tires and make these new features their own. Over the next few weeks I plan on dedicating a post to each of the major new community features, so you can get a feel for what’s possible and how other users are taking advantage of the feature.

Today let’s talk forums. Some of you have been asking for traditional forums, so we wanted to meet that need in this new release – but also give you something with a bit more polish and transparency than the usual message boards. We also wanted to think through how we could connect our forums to other parts of the community, so that members who are already comfortable with this technology could use it as a springboard into other community interactions that may be unfamiliar, like reading and writing blogs, posting a trade note, or using tags to find content that matches their interests.

Well, forums are taking off like a rocket – we’re delighted that folks are rushing in to give this a try. Here are a few of the hottest spots:

If you’re a client familiarizing yourself with a new TK tool or service, you might want to check out The In’s and Outs of Your TradeKing Account. Some really active discussions happening there about ways to get the most out of our tools, navigating around occasional glitches, and the like. (Keep in mind: if you’ve got a time-sensitive question about trading, posting here may not be the best approach. Contact us at client support for the fastest response to your inquiry – Service@TradeKing.com.)

While you’re at it, tell us what you’d like to see us add next to the TK roster of tools at the 2008 TradeKing Wishlist. TradeKing staff folks post to both boards frequently, and we’ve been seeing some brisk, constructive discussions already.

You’re also welcome to strike up your own conversation. For example, right now folks are discussing the newsletters we offer as part of our AutoTrade feature; other folks are trying to learn about options on various ETFs. There’s another discussion going explaining “shorting against the box” – and that’s just a handful.

Right now we’re keeping all threads in the same common pot, but pretty soon I can imagine we’ll start organizing these into larger categories: TradeKing feedback, options questions, ETF questions, etc. I can imagine all kinds of cool other uses for the forums that we haven’t seen yet, too. Imagine if we were to start a thread about each of the major options strategies – from covered call writing
to basic spreads up to the more advanced plays. You could start researching a new strategy using the Options Playbook (available under the Education menu) for some very easy-to-read theory, then move on to the forums to learn how folks have put this strategy into practice, both successfully and not-so-successfully. It could be a hugely valuable repository for collective experience on each of these strategies, like a Wikipedia of options plays! Cool, no?

Best of all, I think, is the added transparency we’ve built into our forums. You can see at a glance if a given user is a brokerage account client of ours and, if so, check out their public trading history with us using the Certified Trades feature. That client may’ve even written some trade notes explaining their rationale for placing a certain trade, so you can see if their logic squares with yours or not. In other words, our forums offer some much-needed transparency and accountability, which should add to the overall quality and reliability of conversations that happen there.

Well, I’m all fired up – hope you are, too! If you haven’t checked out the forums yet, take a look today and let me know what you think. Or better yet, post your comments in the What does everyone think? thread about the new community design.

Be Good,
Don

[image: forums image on TradeKing Community home page]
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Follow the markets at the TradeKing Blog, or learn more about options strategies from the Options Guy.