Dealing with boredom is one of the hardest things for traders. For traders the solution would often mean having a screen devoted to online poker, three hour lunches, or “who knows what.” During my equity trading days over 10 years ago, the firm I worked at had two groups of traders during the slow hours. One section played multi-person shoot-em up games with dozens of players all clogging up the company’s network (one star trader got himself a separate CPU and screens just for the game). The other group was addicted to Hot or Not. The website was basically a place where people posted images of themselves and viewers voted them Hot or Not. Not sure what happened to the site but it was several years ahead of its time and as the first real Web 2.0 site in a time when the world was still adopting to Web 1.0.

What made Hot or Not popular was its simplicity. You just kept getting new images and would click hot or not. For many traders it became their job while trading was the side venture.

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TradingView, a new addition to the Social Trading world is quickly gaining a larger following and readership by using a similar model. TradingView, a product of financial software company MultiCharts was launched on September of last year and currently boasts over 13,000 registered users with 9000 daily unique visitors with an average of 45 minutes on the site. According to Stan Bokov COO at MultiCharts & TradingView, they want “TradingView to become the YouTube of financial charts. A place for everybody to upload and share their charts.” He explained that they saw “websites where you can create charts, but nowhere to store and share them.”

At TradingView, users can view and create real time forex and stock charts while also being able to insert numerous indicators. The social feature that differentiates them from other online charting websites is the ability to post trade ideas. To share an idea, users state whether they are long or short, add a short explanation of their analysis, and can include indicators to prove their points. Once shared, readers can vote “agree or disagree” or add their comments. The chart trade idea can also be automatically linked to other social networks such as Twitter and StockTwits. Perhaps not as catchy as Hot or Not, but the “agree or disagree” feature does create a quick way for users to be engaged on the site and for idea posters to get feedback on their ideas.

Within the FX side of things, forex pairs are well represented, with the EURUSD & AUDUSD being two of the top followed trading instruments. The comment stream in the EURUSD is especially active with an ongoing back and forth among users throughout the day.

For brokers and research sites, TradingView can be a solid place to post trading ideas and build a reputation. Similar to other social sites, users can add their website URL and what they do on their profile. In addition, chart posters are allowed to provide links within the comment section of their analysis to their websites if the link provides greater explanation on their trades.

While still focusing on attracting new users to build their network, TradingView also has expansion plans for the product. According to Stan Bokov, the site is built using HTML5 technology which puts it ahead of its competitors and allows TradingView to be easily integrated with other systems. In the future the company is creating an app store where users can purchase add-ons to enhance their chart features. They are also open to working with existing technology providers to add TradingView on their platforms. Ultimately, TradingView’s goal is for the product to become a multi-broker trading platform where traders from different companies can share their ideas within one network.