Here are my top 5 choices, according to their design, structure, level of activity of the spam-fighting.
Online forums supply a need to share and communicate with fellow traders while sitting alone in front of the computer. A simple Google search for forex forums will yield many more results in the front page, but not all of them are good enough. Here are my choices.
- Forex Factory: The leading independent forex forum.  The number of  viewers that read the messages and the number of users that participate in the forums’ various threads are huge. There aren’t many forums, and the intense debates are seen in a few long running threads. Note that other threads are also active. The forum is based on the known straightforward phpBB platform, but was significantly tweaked. One of the things that make it a valuable resource is the high level of spam-fighting – the moderators, which work transparently, are tough with anything that smells like an unauthorized advertisement and the big amount of users also help in identifying these problematic replies. The site also has a calendar and a news section – both also popular.
- Forex-TSD: This is also a very popular. It’s design is more flat, making the threads more equal in popularity. There are no additional sections – this also contributes to the distribution of discussions. Also here, a high level of spam-fighting is seen – the moderators act quietly to eliminate unwanted messages.
- FXStreet forums: The big independent forex portal has lots of resources, and the forum isn’t in the limelight. Still, the forum section is very well organized, has interesting debates about forex strategies, and enjoys a high level of moderation. One of the features that stands out is Ask The Wizard forum, where newbies get quick answers to their questions.
- DailyFX forums: This portal, which is owned by FXCM, is rich in resources and in features. In my review of DailyFX, I mentioned that the forums are strictly separated from the main site. This is not to my liking, yet the forums are quite active and are well designed. For example, there’s a forum for each of the major currency pairs. The forum is moderated, but this moderation is sometimes slow – spam messages can get too much exposure in comparison to other forums.
- Oanda FXTrade: Oanda is possibly the biggest broker in the world in terms of traders. The forums have a significant number of their traders, so some of the discussions are Oanda-related. These discussions are valuable to users of the platform, an advantage I haven’t seen in other forums that belong to brokers. The level of activity is good, with a nice distribution of threads. Similar to Forex Factory, the moderation is transparent, and this is great. But similar to DailyFX, it’s sometimes slow.
Do you have additional high quality forums that you think that belong in the list? Let me know…
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