Networking - Out Of Strength Or Weakness

Recently I stumbled upon the announcement of a new network / community, focused on investment advice. The network was open for all investment advisors. The first thing that came to my mind was: how peculiar the timing of this opening.
Previous months have been rather difficult for the investment advisor. What do you advise you client these days. A poll on the home page asks the questions: is it possible to give advice to clients these days? Answers are categorized as: Yes, don't do anything right now / Yes, now are the real chances / No, the stock-exchange doesn't show any clear direction...
Timing is not the best competence of financial or investment advisors. Although the saying goes that you should "buy, when there is blood on the street," emotion keeps people from acting.
Instead the advisors gather and seek emotional support by setting up a network. It must be a comfort to hear that others don't know what to do either...
Perhaps I'm too negative, but networking is often done out of weakness, and not out of strength.
This reminds me of Marx (No, not Karl) who sent the club a wire stating, "please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member".
I have been member of a few networks myself and indeed I started with these at the time of starting up a business. Before that I was member of LinkedIn, but that was it. Al of a sudden, networks and communities come-up out of the blue.
You may think that a free membership cannot do any harm, but you have to ask too, what the added value really is? It's a numbers game as many other games.
In case of the investment community I wonder how sincere the contributions are. What do you think: is it now the time to invest or to wait. Experiences investors will know the answer...
Recently I found an article titled: Get out of the stock market now! It was from someone who had studied the stock market for 20 or more years and concluded that it was time to find other investment opportunities.
The insecure and immature investors will laugh at this advice. But as information becomes more freely available, so will increase the uncertainty amongst people. There are so many opinions and so many networks that it becomes more of an issue to find and hold an opinion of yourself.
Think about this when you subscribe to a new network. Do it out of strength and not out of weakness.