eToro Review

Review

eToro, founded in 2007 and domiciled in Limassol, Cyprus, is a leading social site on the global scene with over 6M traders.  It is regulated by CySEC, FCA and has been the recipient of several awards. 

eToro is one of the leading social trading platforms. Social trading is a process that offers an opportunity for Forex traders who trade online to retrieve information assembled from other retail traders and use their combined experience and knowledge to trade in their own accounts.  Traders can connect with other traders, discuss trading strategies, and use the eToto patented CopyTrader™ technology to automatically copy their trading portfolio performance.

Accounts

eToro has just upped the minimum deposit required for its account to $200 in Arabic regions.  It remains $100 or up to 40% of their realized equity (Up to $50,000) in all other areas.  

Anyone depositing $20,000 or more becomes a Premium member and receives special benefits such as a personal account manager, direct access to the eToro trading room and faster withdrawals.

One of the most important factors that should always be considered when choosing a Forex broker are the costs of trading, which can be broken down into two categories: spreads and commissions, and overnight financing charges or payments frequently referred to as “swap rates”. The swap rates are unimportant for day traders, but spreads and commissions are always important. Swap rates are openly published on eToro’s website, which we find commendable. During the most active market hours, we found that eToro typically charges a floating spread of 3 pips on the benchmark EUR/USD currency pair. The typical USD/JPY spread is 2 pips and the typical spread for GBP/USD is 4 pips. Commissions are not charged, so what you see upfront in the quoted spreads is what you get. These spreads are a little on the high side in today’s market. Spreads can of course become considerably lower if you become a successful “Popular Investor”, with the most successful able to trade completely without spreads at all! That is a very competitive offer in today’s market.

The maximum leverage offered is 1:30

There is no additional cost to copying a trader. Spreads remain the same regardless of whether a trader is copying someone or is manually trading on his own.

I was pleased to see that a practice account is available but this option was only listed in the ‘Ask a Question’ section which is a shame as newbie traders may miss this opportunity if they don’t read all the information in FAQ.

As a demo account user, traders have access to the eToro’s social trading platform. However, trading activity and profiles are only displayed for real traders.

eToro  Platform view

Features

Social networking has grown exponentially in the investment arena. eToro pioneered the ‘social’ trading arena years ago and has recently introduced its New eToro trading platform.  eToro encourages clients to connect with one another to trade, invest, learn and share knowledge across the network and the top ranking traders are listed on the landing page along with the number of copiers, their win ratio and gain percentage. Their CopyTrader program provides traders with the opportunity to crowd work by copying the best traders on the eToro trading network, quickly and simply. With the Copy Trading portfolio, copied trades go directly to the trader’s account automatically and this allows traders to manage their copied trades in a simple and transparent way.

The Personal Investment Program clients can build and monetize their investment portfolio with accumulated trades, earning an attractive monthly income as well as their profits. 

Traders at eToro, can benefit from Personal Portfolios, Watchlists, News Feed (similar to Facebook Wall), trading history, stats, risk levels and can use one click trading from all screens.

They can also select to search by entering specific profile features such as location, per cent of returns or duration of trade.

The choice of investment at etoro is vast and includes a diversity of stocks on the financial markets, precious metals like gold and commodities such as crude oil. The top performing investors set the example, and traders can copy their methods. In addition to its long list of trading products, eToro now offers US, Spanish and Italian stocks, as well as ETFs and Russian and Chinese ADRs.

eToro introduced the bitcoin to its list of trading choices in January, 2014. However, as opposed to most other bitcoin brokers, eToro’s lists the bitcoin as a stock on its platform rather than as a currency. The platform trades the bitcoin on a CFD basis, which means users buy and sell financial derivatives that track the BTC price without actually owning the underlying asset.

eToro has recently introduced a new platform by taking their old WebTrader and OpenBook platforms and redesigning them to fit all devices. It isa  responsive HTML5 Web application that is fully optimized and runs on any mobile device.

The full features of their mobile app are available on their website and the website can be accessed via mobile devices.  However, they haven't been updated to offer all Copytrader features yet, so for now it is advisable to use the website on mobile rather than the app.

Deposits/ Withdrawals

Deposits can be made to an eToro account via bank transfer, credit cards, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, WebMoney and MoneyBookers.

Withdrawals are made by entering the ‘cashiers’ section, clicking on withdrawal and filling out the electronic withdrawal form. 

Promotions

Due to regulatory restrictions, eToro does not offer typical deposit bonuses.  However, traders can enjoy additional promotions by registering to be a Popular Investor, where they can enjoy a a 2% management fee.  If you’re a regular trader, this is definitely a program that we recommend looking into.  

Education

The eToro education center offers several tools for enhancing successful trading including webinars, training courses and a host of videos. They offer a choice of trading guides starting with the basics of trading and how to deposit and withdraw money from an already existing account.

Traders can join a live webinar and learn their way around the eToro platform with the help of eToro’s online trading experts. Traders can hear top trading tips from financial experts in the field.

eToro’s exclusive financial trading eCourses help traders master financial trading at their own pace. These interactive eCourses are geared to both new and experienced traders.

The news screen on the WebTrader platform shows what's happening in the world of Forex at the moment. The news items are updated live by the eToro team of market analysts.

eToro also offers a blog in a variety of different languages. 

Customer Support

Traders can contact an eToro representative at customer support by phone or live chat 24/5. Telephone support is toll free to local numbers in the UK, Cyprus and New Zealand and questions can be sent via email for a quick response. 

etoro has offices spread across the globe, so they are suited to deal with a customer base that speaks a multitude of different languages.

Conclusion

eToro is certainly one of the best choices for anyone looking for more interaction with other currency traders and who are interested in studying how other people invest.  The OpenBook platform provides a good testing ground for beginners and the choice accounts in different locations is welcoming.  Experienced traders who look for tiny spreads may not like the two pip minimum at eToro.

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Features

There is no doubt that the main focus at eToro is its social trading and the features offered to facilitate this opportunity set eToro above most other Forex and CFD brokers. In addition to the listing of the top traders that appears on the front page of the site, traders at eToro can practically customize their search of traders to copy using their CopyTrader Program and by entering specific profile information. This is quite unique in the industry and helps traders feel more confident in their choice of which traders to follow. 

In terms of features, the stand-out strengths of this broker’s offerings are:

• An excellent proprietary platform customized to effectively maximize the broker’s key offering: copy trading and social trading on a wide range of instruments.
• An unusually wide range of instruments available for trading: all the major and minor Forex currency pairs, as well as several exotics; also, a selection of individual stocks, plus many commodities and global equity indices.
• Regulated by several major industry centers (notably the FCA in the U.K. CySEC in Cyprus and ASIC ).
• Patented CopyTrader™ Technology allowing for the easy and accurate copying of trading portfolios.
• Effortless participation in the Popular Investor program can bring successful traders a real, paid, withdrawable commission capped at a maximum of 2% of assets under management and a 100% spread rebate credited to their trading account.

Choose from thousands of traders to copy, with full analytics including visible for them all.

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Platforms

CopyTrader

eToro pride ourselves on aiming to keep simplicity in mind. To this end, they have developed flexible trading platforms which provide fast and easy access to many financial markets. eToro provide a combination of easy to use trading platforms – both from home and on the road - and the largest social trading network of any broker in the world, appealing to every level of trading experience.

eToro CopyTrader Platform

CopyTrader

The main platform is the CopyTrader. Regardless of how much experience a trader has in the financial arena, it is quick and easy for all traders to get started with the CopyTrader functionality. With CopyTrader, you can see who is trading which currencies, commodities, indices and stocks and immediately copy their trades.

The CopyTrader program offers traders with the opportunity to crowd work by copying the best traders on the eToro trading network, quickly and simply. With the Copy Trading portfolio, copied trades go directly to the trader’s account automatically and this allows traders to manage their copied trades in a simple and transparent way.

One of the major attractions of eToro – to most of its users, probably the major attraction – is its Popular Investor program. Simply put, to become a Popular Investor, you just let other eToro clients see your trades, copying them if they want, and once you get a certain minimum number of copiers you begin to get paid, both in real cash and in partial. To qualify as a Popular Investor, you must deposit a minimum of $1,000 and maintain at least one copier for a 2-month period, as well as a minimum average equity of $500. 

Proprietary

The old WebTrader and OpenBook apps have been combined into a single, responsive HTML5 Web application that is fully optimized and runs on any device.

Mobile

The full features of their mobile apps are available on their website and the website can be accessed via mobile devices.  However, they haven't been updated to offer all Copytrader features yet.

The iOS and Android "eToro Social Trading" Apps, which support both Trading and Copy.

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CopyPortfolios

In November 2016, eToro made a new, innovative financial product available to its traders: CopyPortfolios™. eToro is one of the first and most established providers of copy trading services, but CopyPortfolios™ takes copy trading to a new dimension. Instead of being required to comb through thousands of possibilities to select traders and investment strategies to copy, traders can use CopyPortfolios™ to simplify and expedite the process by choosing from a selection of pre-packaged Copy portfolios that wrap together a selection top traders or investment strategies/positions in choice markets. There are two types of CopyPortfolios™: Top Trader CopyPortfolios and Market CopyPortfolios.

Top Trader CopyPortfolios

These Copy portfolios are selected according to eToro’s own criteria, and work to give an equal investment weighting to a selection of top-performing and active eToro traders. The Copy portfolios are managed and rebalanced by a machine-learning engine and operate under the supervision of eToro’s investment committee. There are current two Copy portfolios within this category:

1. GainsQTR (Quarterly Gainers): the Copy portfolio selects up to 50 traders whom eToro’s algorithm identifies as most likely to generate a positive trading performance over the forthcoming quarter year. Investment is equally weighted between the selected traders in copying their trades. The selected participating traders are periodically reviewed and when any are found to have performed at too wide a deviation from their anticipated positive performance, they are removed from the Copy portfolio during a rebalancing event. Of course, new traders may be selected and added at these rebalancing events.
2. ActiveTraders (Top Active Traders): the Copy portfolio selects a large number of traders whom eToro’s algorithm identifies as having proven positive track records and also being most likely to achieve the best possible reward to risk ratio over the following quarter. In this Copy portfolio, a tight “stop loss” is enforced on selected traders, who are removed immediately from being copied by the Copy portfolio, without waiting for the next scheduled rebalancing event. The capital allocated to such deselected traders is carried over as cash within the Copy portfolio’s balance until the next rebalancing event.

In July 2017 eToro launched the Crypto CopyCopy portfolio to allow eToro traders to exposure to today’s most popular digital currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, DASH, LiteCoin, Ripple and Ethereum Classic.  This offering, launched in July 2017, is analyzed regularly and rebalanced monthly to offer traders a diversified portfolio weighted according to market cap.  As with all CopyPortfolios, a minimum $5000 is required.

eToro Promotions

Top Trader MarketCopy portfolios

This offering is markedly different than the Top Trader option: MarketCopy portfolios are based upon taking a directional position in one market sector. Just as banks, pensions and mutual Copy portfolios offer themed investment products in market sectors, so eToro now offer the same. At the time of this review we are not aware of any similar investment opportunities offered by other Forex brokers.

eToro currently offers two MarketCopy portfolios:

1.   TheBigBanks: offers a diversified “long” (buy) investment in a diversified selection of shares in financial sector enterprises, such as banks, and other financial service providers. The Copy portfolio’s share allocation is periodically rebalanced by eToro’s investment committee.
2. BigTech: offers a “long” (buy) investment in shares of technology sector companies. The investment is diversified among sub-sectors including but not limited to telecommunications, entertainment, e-commerce, and software solutions.The CopyPortfolios™ service continues to expand so expect that the choices available from eToro will continue to widen.​​​

eToro Promotions

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Crypto

eToro Crypto Trading

Cryptocurrencies can widely fluctuate in prices and are not appropriate for all investors. Trading cryptocurrencies is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework. Your capital is at risk.

As a top-rated social trading platform, eToro’s crypto trading offerings stand out from the pack and provide traders with unique opportunities for profits, even without deep knowledge of the cryptocurrency world. eToro offers trading of bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash and bitcoin cash. 

In July 2017, the brokerage launched the Crypto CopyCopy portfolio which enables new crypto traders to diversify their crypto exposure under the broker’s algorithmic management.  The benefits to this system are obvious: traders with little or no experience trading digital currencies can take advantage of professional Copy portfolio management, and a diversified crypto portfolio will mitigate risk.  The downside, however, is that a minimum of $5000 is required to enter the eToro Crypto CopyCopy portfolio, making it an expensive investment for traders just looking to dabble in the cryptocurrency markets.

Traders looking to deposit less than $5000 can trade cryptocurrencies directly through the broker’s trading platform and can also follow other crypto traders if they desire.  The eToro CopyTrader platform is extremely easy to use and is suitable for both experienced traders and those new to online trading.  Most trading features are available on both mobile and web versions of the platform making it possible to trade from anywhere.

Another way that eToro helps traders get a leg up on cryptocurrency trading is to provide a daily tracker of cryptocurrencies.  Unlike most brokers that focus most on Forex or general news, eToro places a definite emphasis on these popular assets, providing helpful information and unique analysis designed to help traders place more informed, profitable trades. 

eToro crypto trading is an excellent option for traders looking to trade the latest digital currencies with a highly-regulated global brokerage.  

eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFD assets.

Please note that CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 66% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Cryptoassets are highly volatile unregulated investment product. No EU investor protection.

This content is intended for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or investment recommendation. Past performance is not an indication of future results. Trading history presented is less than 5 complete years and may not suffice as basis for investment decision. This is not investment advice.

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