In crypto currency markets, many people say that it is all about having freedom, about having "your money in your own hands". If you want to trade, there is no high comission fee for the broker to put up orders and there is no waiting, until the stock market has opened - you can trade anywhere, anytime. If you want to hold your funds for a long time, you can transfer them into your wallet and store it safely away from malicious minds. If you want to spend it, you can do it. In any case: **you** are the master of your own stuff. No one needed to trust, but **yourself**. The more you think about this, the stranger it is to see people joining "signal" or "pump"-groups by the thousands, when it comes to trading. It is normal to seek a community for discussions and reach out for opinions. And *some* of them are quite sophisticated, no denying in that. But most of them are spam and more similar to pump&dump-groups than for actual discussion and exchanging information. https://i.imgur.com/AhhISFF.png If you see adds like that, please ignore them for your own sake. Also, most of these groups are more likely to harm not only the crypto community as a whole, but **you** as a single person. Lets make a small list on __why__ this is the case: # **1st: Emotions** These groups are often full of emotions - be it hope, excitement or dispair. This can sway your confidence or make your decisions based not on rationality anymore, but on the emotions of others. If you are set on the premise "COIN X is undervalued, it will rise because of CAUSE Y" or vice versa, you do not debate about emotions, you debate about solid informations and their interpretations. But if you are a sceptical person or even a little bit insecure, then you might know that a simple "are you sure?" is often enough, to put a dent into the most solid determination. Best case, you become unsure and after revaluating your information calm and serious, you revise your decision after finding a mistake in your past analysis. Worse case, you give in to your gut feelings and lose a trade, you otherwise would have had profited from. https://i.imgur.com/8dAcY9i.png Most prevalent emotions in these groups, when all is green... # **2nd: Emotions, disguised as professionalism** Please ask yourself: are you able to distinguish the emotional TA of a hopefull rookie from the rational TA of a experienced, battle-hardened professional? If the answer is "no" or "I am not sure", then being in such groups, open you up to an even higher danger: emotions, disguised as professionalism. The person whose TA you are reading, might not mean you any harm or have malicious intentions. But reading another persons TA and not being influenced by it, is hard. And it is also very easy for someone with malicious intentions, to produce optimistic TA on a overvalued coin, pushing some people into buying it. I saw this in several groups with thousands of members as well as in smaller ones. https://i.imgur.com/qxYJBoi.png ... and when it becomes red. # **3rd: group dynamics** In german, there is a saying that is roughly translated as "Humans are herd animals". I actually dont know, if it is used as often in english as it is in german, but at least my mother used to say this a lot, when I was younger. What she wanted to say by this was not, that human beings are social, but that they tend to follow a strong leader into every lunacy. It is the same with these groups. In the case of these groups, the "leader" just need a couple of supporters, a bit of charisma and a seemingly logical theory. If the horde picks up something, it cannot be wrong, right? This is simply how our brain works. It can lead you into a false sense of security - and in the case of these groups, some people even straight up abuse this way of thinking willingly. https://i.imgur.com/4jjE1TG.png Hey Freud, do you have something to say about this? # **4th: it prevents you from learning** Always listening to buying/selling-"signals" from others is like giving them your money to play with it in a casino. Even **if** you make profits from listening to these groups - you wont get any better at researching and validating information, which makes you always follow the crowd and be too late in many cases. There are two implications: a) you will not get smarter b) you will become seemingly dependent on the group, until you realize that they hold you back **Conclusion:** you can only gain confidence in your trades, if you can proudly say: **"This is my opinion. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Without any research, my opinion is useless. Without an opinion, my research is pointless."** https://i.imgur.com/XHYpfX7.png "Full metal jacket" - great movie