Etoro Review – My Honest Opinion [+TUTORIALS]

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Etoro Review

Use: Social trading website for Forex, Cryptos, Stocks and Commodities

Usefulness

The platform is most useful for new traders that are interesting in finding profitable traders to copy with their own funds.

Costs

rating of 3 stars

The only costs born by traders in Etoro are spreads and overnight fees. Etoro is definitely not the cheapest option to use.

User-friendliness

rating of 5-stars

Etoro is very easy to use. It feels more like a video game than a trading platform.

I Like

I Don't Like

My Verdict

Overall I think that Etoro is currently the best social trading site out there. There are cheaper options out there, but Etoro has the biggest amount of profitable traders to copy. 

It is meant for new traders to invest their money with the professionals who know what they’re doing. You have over 10’000 profitable traders to choose from. In addition to just copying, you can also learn their strategies and trade on your own if you want to. 

What’s this Etoro thing?

By their own words:

EToro is a social trading and Investing company that allows its users to watch the financial trading activity of other users, copy them, and to make their own trades.”

What this means is that you can ethically copy someone else’s trading results – just like back in the good ol’ school days. Except, that getting better grades you can get ideally better trading results.

In order to know who to copy (or cheat off of), you are given a list of traders based on their results.
etoro guide

In addition to how much they have made, you can also see for how long they have been profitable, how much they’ve lost in aday and a lot of other fancy statistics (more on that below).

Key Points

  • Over 5 000 000 real users
  • Users from 170 countries
  • Over 200 000 000 trades opened
  • Founded in 2007
  • Minimum deposit from 50$
  • Maximum leverage 1:400
  • Offers CFD trading
  • Platforms: Web and Mobile Trading
  • Custom Free Education
  • eToro Europe regulated by Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission (CySEC)
  • eToro UK regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

 

Who is it for?

The site is meant for:

  • People that don’t have the time, motivation or skill to day trade by themselves and would rather trust their funds into the hands of traders that know what they’re doing and have a proven track record.
  • Or for beginner to medium level traders who prefer to have an easy to use platform to perform their trades.

You are to decide which trader(s) to follow based on their performance, trading style, risk level or whatever you like.

forex trend analysis

The traders that others are copying are motivated by small fees that people like you are paying for copying them. These fees are rather low and don’t effect your account much, but if the traders are really good, more people will start to follow them and the income can add up.

NB! It is wise to spread your portfolio between traders to manage risk.

Also in addition to copying others, you are able to make trades on your own. The platform is noob friendly, even Homer Simpson could figure it out.

social trading platform

 

But is it any good?

What’s good about it:
  • Super easy to use – the platform has a game-like feeling. You can add fancy indicators if you want to, but there is no real need for it. It’s better than most other forex brokers in that department.
  • Ability to copy professionals – If you don’t know what you’re doing, you have the ability to copy and follow what successful traders and popular investors are doing. This way you can learn about their trading strategies and start making real progress towards becoming a PRO trader yourself.
  • Social sentiment – you get to see what the majority of other traders on the platform are thinking about each instrument.
    sentiment of other traders
  • Solid customer service – I’ve always had all my questions sorted out in no time. They respond quickly and the advice has always been sound.
  • Quick withdrawals and deposits – No trouble putting your money in or taking it out based on my experience. There are some small fees for withdrawals though, please make sure to read the Fees section on their homepage.
  • Free trading education – They seem to be interested in their clients sticking around and have provided free education on their home page. The lessons are made in video format, so more fun to follow.e toro assessment

What’s not so good:

  • Limited customisation – If you are a deep technical trader, you will not be able to put all the indicators or expert advisory services to the platform. MT4/5 is a better choice for you.
  • Platform Fees – While looking for the cheapest online broker, eToro might not be for you. Considering that you are allowed to start with just 100€/$, you might not have a much better alternative.
  • Scalping not allowed – eToro such as many other CFD based brokers do not allow doing small short term trades. Focus on a bit longer time periods instead, such as swing trading.
  • Limited amount of instruments – eToro is continuously adding more instruments to their portfolio, although currently their list is in the hundreds, not thousands. If this is an issue for you, you might want to look elsewhere for a broker. For most newer traders, the list is sufficient.

 

My Personal Experience with Real Money

I base this Etoro review mainly on my own experience and based on what I’ve learned experience, I would recommend them to beginner traders to whom this is a perfect platform to learn trading from.

Now remember, this is not meant for scalping, as they do not allow scalp trading. But it is very good to learn how successful traders actually make money and to start online trading on your own.

I have been using their platform since 2011, mostly through copying others and making some money that way. I keep my funds separated between 10 traders that I copy and like to keep an eye on what they are doing.

If I have some skin in the game, I’ve found that I tend to learn a lot faster.

What I would say though, is that if you are not interested in copying others and your aim is to trade only by yourself, there are other platforms that are more advanced.

I’m not going to get into those in this article, but you can try FXCM instead (you need to have 5000$, but if you do, it’s better for pure day trading).

However one thing I especially like about the trading platform is the social sentiment – you can check what most of the traders are thinking about a certain currency/stock.

For example, if I see that majority of traders are long a currency, I tend to start looking for a short position. It is a very good tool for a contrarian trader. 

TUTORIAL - How to Make Money by Copying the Best Traders on Etoro

The main feature that the platform is famous for is the ability to copy other traders that know what they are doing. The best proof for that is their actual historical trading results. Most beginners have no clue on where to start, which strategy to use, how to analyze their trades, keep their emotions under control and et cetera.

If you’re trying to copy the best traders on the platform, this is how I would go about it:

STEP #1 – Head over to Etoro’s “Copy People” section

first page of copy trader function in etoro

Now you’ll see a fancy screen that starts displaying the results of some of their best performing traders. As there are literally tens of thousands of profitable traders to copy, don’t be lured to pick a trader just randomly. The smarter way to go about it, is to use filtering.

STEP #2 – Use Filters to Find the Top Traders to Follow

Now click on the Advanced Search button on the top right corner. This will open up a myriad of options to choose from. Those are your filters that you need to fine tune in order to find a good range of traders to pick from.

filters in etoro

This is how the filter screen looks like. Let’s go over all of the details that I personally use to find good traders to copy. Now please keep in mind that I like to split my funds between 10 traders and I tend to like riskier traders.

You can adjust your options how ever you like. My version is just one way of doing it.

So here goes:

1st Option – Time period.

time-period

I like to use 2 years as this is the absolute maximum that you can use. Generally longer time periods give you a better understanding of what the future might bring. If you only look at the last 3 months results, the trader might have stellar results, but 4 months ago, he may have had a bigger loss, which you won’t be aware of.

I just choose the max and recommend you do the same.

2nd Set of Options – Profile

Here I just leave them be as default. I haven’t found any real value from touching these options.

  • Status – verified is a good enough option. Etoro won’t let you copy traders that are not verified or do not have real money on their accounts.
  • Country – again, I wouldn’t neglect traders only based on where they’re from. Nationality doesn’t correlate with results so I just recommend to leave it be.
  • Name & Picture – I just pick the profile picture. No real logic behind it, I just like when people show their faces when I’m putting my money to copy them. The other option is to choose to only find traders that also display their full name. You can tick that option as well if you want to. I don’t because I don’t want to leave out any good traders that like to remain anonymous.

3rd Set of Options – Social

social profiles

Again I like to leave these options as they are. Why? Because I don’t care about other copiers, I only care about the trader’s results. If they are new to the arena and have only just proven themselves, I wouldn’t want to leave them out only because no one is copying them yet.

If you’d like to play around with these options, feel free to do so.

  • Copiers – Lets you choose how many copiers the trader has at minimum. This allows you to pick from traders that have at least a certain amount of traders already copying them.
  • Copiers Change – This option is good to find rising talent. It lets you filter out the traders that have a high increase in new traders following them. If someone is showing good results, people will start to follow them. However you need to do your own due diligence as the masses tend to follow the high earners while totally neglecting the risk side – more on that later.
  • Copy AUM – How much money is set to copy the trader. Here you can pick a minimum amount of money that has already being invested with a trader.

4th Set of Options – Performance

Now this is where things get interesting. Choosing Traders based on their performance. From here on out, they way you choose your traders will determine your success as a copy trader.

I’m going to continue by showing what has worked well for me:

  • Return – I choose returns from 30%. Anything below that is too little for my taste, anything above is attractive. If you want more return, I don’t recommend to pick a higher number here as you can sort the results by the return later.
  • Profitable months – this means that how many profitable months has the trader had. My choice is 70%+. All traders have losing trades and losing months. This comes with the territory. I believe that anything below that is too much losses and 70% is enough to find good traders at.
  • Profitable trades – I personally know people that have below 50% win ratio, but are still profitable most of the time. This really depends on the specific strategy a trader uses. However I still like to use 50% as the threshold here in Etoro.

5th Set of Options – Risk

Risk may seem like a boring topic, but bear with me, because it really is super important. The main aim of these options is to weed out the highly risky traders. I do like risk, but it needs to be managed properly. I’m going to show you how to do proper risk management:

  • Risk Score – Etoro has their own risk score for the traders. Here I just set it more aggressively than the default options have been set. I set the numbers from 1-6 to include riskier traders as well.
  • Daily Drawdown – As I said, I like risk, but I like to keep it under control.. Daily drawdown lets you set the maximum amount of money the trader has lost per day. As I spread my funds between at least 10 people and recommend you do the same, 5% is the absolute maximum that I dare to use. This will have riskier trader popping up on your search results, but the risk is kept at 5% per day, based on historical data.
  • Weekly Drawdown – Similar to the previous one, only it applies to a whole week. Again this enables seeing riskier traders, but with risk comes reward.

All the rest, I leave them be as they are.

Now when you’re done, just click the X and it will display a custom filtered set of results. The set criteria gave me 71 results.

 

STEP #3 Sort Based on Return

From here I push the Return column heading to sort the results based on traders’ performance. As all of these traders fit my set criteria, I could pick any one of them.

However I still like to go through all of their profiles starting from the top to see if they are a good fit. If everything checks out, I put 10% of my funds to copy them and move further down the list.

For example – AlexPlesk is the #1 trader based on my pre-set criteria. He has made a staggering 109.29% over the course of the past 12 months. That is amazing.

In order to have a better overview of their performance, click on their profile and check it through.

profitable-trader-on-etoro

Past Performance – He has had some stellar results. When we look back at his monthly data, all months except January have been profitable for the Russian trader. And in January he only lost under one percent. I like what I see, but continue further.

alexplex from etoro

Risk Score – he has a rather good risk score. Etoro ranks their traders on a risk scale of 1-10. If you remember, we set our criteria to allow risk grade 6. However he seems to be the #1 trader while having a medium level risk grade. You can read more about Etoro’s risk grading system from this blog post.

Copiers – Alexander seems to have a tonne of copiers, 8560 to be exact. All those copiers use more than 300K$ to copy him. This means that Alex is earning some decent money from people that follow him. Providing him additional motivation to keep performing well.

Max Drawdown – He has made 109% in the past 12 months while having an annual maximum drawdown of 9%. That is quite amazing risk/return ratio. If you were to copy him with 5K$, you would only have been down by 450$ the most, but having ended the year with 10450$.

Trading Stats – in the past 12 months, Alex has made 635 trades, indicating that he is a very active trader. Out of those 600+ trades, 75% were profitable. His average profit was over 10%, while his average loss was 5.98%. He has mostly traded stocks, but has also done trades in crypto currencies, currency pairs, commodities and other instruments.

obama-with-a-beer-mug

Based on this data, I would definitely allocate 10% to copy him. Yes, it is tempting to put more money to copy him, but I advise against it. You never know when a trader changes their course and starts taking on more risk which could harm your account.

Now continue to choose the other candidates to follow and copy..

STEP #4 Sort by Risk Grade

Another good way to find good traders to copy quickly is by sorting your results based on Risk grade.

sorting by risk grade

I quickly found Trex from South Africa who has a low risk score of 3 while earning a 56% profit ratio. His good results have not gone unnoticed, he has 4K+ copiers.

trader trex from south africa

Checking through his historical performance, he has had stable results. His biggest losing month dates back to 2015 and it remained under 5%, which indicates that he has a good risk/reward ratio and a winning strategy.

Follow at least 10 people to minimize your risks

Remember that past performance is not indicative of future results – they are just a mere guideline. By following at least 10 people, you will significantly minimize your chances of losing a large portion of your account size due to one trader. The more you diversify, the less overall risk you’ll have.

PRO TIPS that I would recommend to keep in mind when choosing your dream team:

 

Conclusion – Is Etoro Worth It?

For beginner traders – Yes. I think it’s an excellent resource to get your feet wet in the trading world and learn about strategies that work by copying successful traders. You don’t get to do that with most other brokers. With Etoro you get to see what the professionals are trading and what strategies they are using to become a better trader yourself.

Also if you don’t have the time to follow the markets daily, you just find out which traders perform the best and put your funds to copy their trades automatically. In addition to this passive approach, you can also do active trading whenever you have the time available.

Plus the platform is super beginner friendly, which is definitely not the case with most brokers that are used by the professionals.

For advanced traders – No/Yes.

NO – Because there are better options out there for pure trading purposes, if copying others is not your thing and you only want to focus on trading your own strategy, then I would choose a more sophisticated broker.

YES –  if your strategy is profitable, you could earn extra money from trading through Etoro and having other people that copy your trades. This way you can earn a singificant amount of extra income by becoming a kind of fund manager.

For investors – Yes.

The main reason why I think that Etoro is good is the ability to diversify your funds among a number of experience traders that have shown consistently profitable results in the past. The past does not indicate the future, but it gives you a pretty good clue.

By copying a number of traders that have achieved 50+% returns, you could use Etoro as a strong alternative investing platform that can yield way higher than market returns. Also trader’s results are usually not affected by market downturns. 

 

What others are saying about it?

My opinion is one thing, but I’m just one guy. This review is written based on my own experience and research from other blogs and forums. In order to get a more objective review, please leave your feedback below.

Do you have personal experience?etoro feedback
Please leave your feedback below.

Big Thanks to all the contributors!

Have no experience with eToro? I recommend to give them a go. It is one of the best platforms for
newer traders to learn from.

logo

Etoro FAQ

Minimum deposit size depends on your country, but generally starts from 50$.

The main way’s to deposit funds to your account are:

  • Credit card
  • Paypal
  • Western Union
  • Moneybookers
  • Wire Transfer

Check the link below for a thorough tutorial on how to  withdraw money to various platforms:

https://www.etoro.com/en/customer-service/withdraw-faq/

The limit is set at 100, which is probably more than you’ll need. 

Yes, since 2016 Etoro offers trading in 5 most popular cryptocurrencies for its’ users. The current list of cryptocurrencies includes:

  • Bitcoin
  • Etherum
  • Litecoin
  • Dash
  • Ripple

Unfortunately Traders from the US are currently not allowed due to the regulations that are set by the US government. Check out these good alternatives to Etoro for US Traders. 

This is a very common question. But, the answer is Yes, Etoro is allowed for people from India. 

Etoro is regulated by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority and thus can provide its services to the people from the United Kingdom.

This is how Etoro differs from most other brokers that are only regulated by the CySEC in Cyprus.

I have compiled a list of Etoro alternatives on a separate blog post. 

Based on my personal experience and on feedback from a lot of other traders, they are definitely not a scam broker. If you believe otherwise, please leave a comment below and explain why you think so. 

Review Summary
Review Date
Reviewed Item
Etoro Social Trading Platform
Author Rating
31star1star1stargraygray

46 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve only started with them, but so far so good.
    Deposited 500£ and you were right about the platform, it does feel like playing a game. You need to constantly remind yourself that it’s not, lol

    • Hi Jimmy, thank you for your input!
      May I ask what did you think about their education tools? I see you rated it with a 6.6, but could you ellaborate a bit more on this.
      Thanks man!

  2. I am still on demo mode, will deposit some real money soon.
    Have lost some with my own trades on demo, but the trades that were copied, were mostly profitable.

  3. I am not sure about the education or customer support, have never used them.
    Ease of use is great, I could figure it out easily. Fees and commissions, well compared to Plus500 and XM, Etoro is about the same so I wouldn’t complain tbh.

    • Hi James,

      Thank you for the input!
      I will look into the commissions of different brokers that are meant for beginner to medium level traders. I’ve noticed that brokers with lower deposit thresholds (<5000$) seem to have similar spreads, quite comparable to Etoro.
      I will look more into this and do a dedicated article on this.

  4. Coming from Plus500, the etoro commissions not big. If I trade hold overnite, then some costs add, but also not that many. Education is OK, not the best, but good to start. Customer support was helpful and frendly to me.

    • Thank you for your input, it is much appreciated!
      Also, you are probably comparing the educational part with some other option – could you specify from where did you find the best trading related education. I would like to review it and share it with the blog readers.

  5. I think they are Ok for beginner. I wanted to become someone that people could follow too, but the minimum requirement is 10000€. Thats a bit too much for me. Was hoping to get some followers myself, but will have to become better/richer I guess.

    • Hi Thorre,

      Yes, they implemented a threshold for traders that are copyable a few years ago.
      This is actually benefitial for the copiers as there will be less people that have accidentally made big returns on their tiny accounts while having taken immense amount of risk.

      If your system works, you will hit the 10K threshold sooner or later.
      Good luck with your goals!

  6. I tried this via a demo account using proxies, because Etoro is currently not accepting US citizens.
    Do you know any good alternatives that allow US citizens?
    Overall I really liked Etoro, interface was awesome and my demo acc was profitable, hence the eagerness to open a real one.

    Thanks!
    Nathan

  7. Really love their interface. Easy to use, I can set my stop-losses and where I want to take my profits.
    Having previously used the Metatrader 4 platform, which I found to look like something from the year 1995, Etoro’s platform is like stepping 20 years into the future from where I came from.
    As a beginner, I like it a lot.

  8. eToro demo account until now.
    I trade real on Plus500, and planning doing so on eToro, so Friends and others can copy me. I’m blind and can use Plus500 very well, using blind’s assistive technology, screen reader, same with eToro both on web platforms.
    eToro Android and android mobil platforms are not usable for my software, Android Plus500 is usable but not as good for my software.

  9. You are right, the interface is newbie friendly. I could easily locate through various currency pairs and learn the ropes in my first day of using.
    Almost feels like a video game compared to the Metatrader 5 platform that I was using.

    About the fees, I haven’t really paid attention to them, I think I should tho. And the customer support was rather helpful.

  10. I like the Etoro. Very easy to use.
    Fees were almost same comparing to Ironfx which I also use.
    Looks nice and easy to trade and copy pro-s.

  11. Thanks for the overview. I use them as an alternative investment vehicle. Your tutorial part pretty much covers how I take advantage of it. Not really for day trading, but for trying to make 30+% return per year.

    • Hi Christie,

      I appreciate the input! One question though, you said that you’re trying to make 30% per year.. how has that worked out for you so far? I’m asking cause I’m thinking of putting together a small case study for Etoro as a long term investing tool.

  12. Deposited 500 pounds 6 months ago, traded with some of the money myself with not so good results.
    The money that I dedicated to copying others has shown me an 18% return within those 5-6 months.

    All in all has been a zero sum game for me, but to be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to trading on my own.

    • Yeah, that’s why I like the ability to interact with the pro traders. I get to ask questions about their trades and learn from them.
      Whenever I see a consistently profitable trader, I become interested to learn their ways to help me improve my trading.

  13. Seems decent, but can’t use this from the States. Is there a workaround? Or are there any competitors that allow US citizens to trade?

    Thanks,
    Jack

  14. They are scam, spread is unbelievable and the prices are not correct. They always go down lower than the actual market, trigger Stoploss and then immediately fix the price. I complained and they literally sent me and wxcel sheet saying that “no manipulation here” as if i cant inout numbers in an excel sheet and send them to anyone. When you check the price of the stock it’s obvious it has never dropped so low on any trading site. Avoid at all means. I told them I will be taking legal action & reporting them on all sites

  15. Paul
    Anyway that you or someone could do a review of Zulutrade similar to this one you did on Etoro. From the US, and it would be very helpful. I have never traded anything and I am trying to as much due diligence as possible, Really enjoy your site and all your useful information

  16. This is such a great article! Thank you for going in to the detail of how to use Etoro, it’s really helpful for a newbie like me. One question I have is around converting my money. I’m in the UK, and as Etoro trades in UK$, what’s the lowest cost way to transfer sterling into Etoro and then withdraw it as well? Thanks!

  17. My wife made me read about etoro reviews on the Internet before investing and it’s good that I did it. In particular, read the comments on this site and decided not to invest. It’s better to keep my money in a safe place with me than to fill the pockets of thieves.

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