If you are an active stock market investor you will probably know all about the various share trading forums and bulletin boards. These cover both individual stocks and investing ideas in general, and can be very educational and helpful. However they do also have their drawbacks so you have to make sure that you are getting the most out of these forums.

It's all too easy to visit these investing forums and be sucked into the various forum threads which make outrageous claims about certain shares. For example threads with titles such as 'Company X Is A Possible 10 Bagger' and 'Company Y Will Treble It's Profits By 2010' are commonplace.

These forums are full of wannabe millionaires looking to ramp up the share price of their own shares by making up false rumours and exaggerating the future profit potential of their companies. If they don't start their own threads about their companies, they will add to the discussion of an existing thread and always post positive comments about the company in the hope that other readers of the forum will be tempted to buy, and therefore push the share price up.

This is something you always have to bear in mind when reading any comments on an investing forum. There is always the chance that a poster has an ulterior motive whenever they make a comment.

The trick is to seek out the knowledgeable and experienced members of the forum. These people are for me the real reason why stock market forums can be so invaluable. After all where else can you learn how to invest successfully and pick the brains of experienced and profitable investors for free?

These people usually only make useful contributions to the forums and certainly don't ramp up any of the shares they may hold. You can learn a lot from these people, and so try and build up a group of people who you know and trust and don't be afraid to ask the occasional question as they have probably been investing successfully for many years, and will usually be glad to help if you are polite and ask nicely.

Investing forums get a lot of bad press because they are famous for being full of rampers, and that is true to an extent, but don't let that put you off visiting them. If you ignore all the noise created by these people, and instead take your time seeking out the experienced and successful investors on a particular forum, then you will find that these stock market forums can actually be a great educational tool.

By: James Woolley

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