An online trading community provides participants with a structured method for trading, bartering, or selling goods and services. These communities often have forums and chatrooms designed to facilitate communication between the members. An online trading community can be likened electronic equivalent of a bazaar, flea market, or garage sale.

A trading circle is a form of online trading designed to facilitate viewing of television series and episodic media. Physical media such as videocassettes, DVDs and CDs are exchanged via mail. Each member agrees to pass an episode on to the next member in a timely fashion, thereby allowing all members of the group to view the series. This communal trading method is also used by special interest clubs such as anime clubs.

A formal trading community consists of a website or network of websites that facilitate and track trade transactions. Some websites, such as the video game trading site Goozex charge transactional fees per trade, while other similar sites such as GameTZ do not.

Key elements of formal trading communities: Transactional tracking, Ratings and feedback system, Content listing, referencing, and matching
An Internet forum, or message board, is a bulletin board system in the form of a discussion site. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content.

Forums allow anonymous visitors to view the contents and consist of a group of contributors who've registered into the system, becoming known as members. The members submit topics for discussion (known as threads) and communicate with each other using publicly visible messages (referred to as posts) or private messaging.

Some online trading communities have specific rules adopted by the users of that community, and though they can differ most have settled upon a few standard practices: The less experienced trader (usually indicated by their feedback or trade history) sends their half first. It is generally frowned upon by most communities to thread crap (A term referring to a user not involved in the pending trade undercutting a trade in progress with either a better deal or reasons for the trade not to take place). When online trading any used items be sure to include the condition and quality of the product so as the receiver can determine the overall value of it.

An investor is any party that makes an investment. The term has taken on a specific meaning in finance to describe the particular types of people and companies that regularly purchase equity or debt securities for financial gain in exchange for funding an expanding company. Less frequently, the term is applied to parties who purchase real estate, currency, commodity derivatives, personal property, or other assets.

A retail day trader is a trader who works for himself or in partnership with a few other traders. A retail trader generally trades with his own capital, though he may also trade with other people's money. Law has restricted the amount of other people's money a retail trader can manage. In the United States, day traders may not advertise as advisors or financial managers. Although not required, nearly all retail day traders use direct access brokers as they offer the fastest order entry and to the exchanges, as well as superior software trading platforms.

In the past, most day traders were institutional traders due to the huge advantages they had over retail traders. However, since the technology boom in the second half of the 1990s, advances in personal computing and communications technology, realized in the accessibility of powerful personal computers and the Internet, have brought fast online trading and powerful market analytical tools to the mainstream. Low, affordable commissions from discount brokers as well as regulation improvements in favor of retail traders have also helped level the trading playing field, making success as a retail trader a possibility for many and a reality for some.

The term implies that a party purchases and holds assets in hopes of achieving capital gain, not as a profession or for short-term income. The term investor protection defines the entity of efforts and activities to observe safeguard and enforce the rights and claims of a person in his role as an investor. This includes advice and legal action. The assumption of a need of protection is based on the experience that financial investors are usually structurally inferior to providers of financial services and products due to lack of professional knowledge, information and/or experience.