Etoro.com is one of the world’s leading social trading and investing platforms designed to open the global financial markets for its clients to trade and invest in an easy yet transparent way.
Etoro allows investors to trade financial assets across multiple markets- including Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, Stocks, Indices, Forex and ETFs.
The platform’s social trading and investing platform gives investors the opportunity to manually invest in financial products across six various asset classes and automatically copy the trades of other investors on the platform. This enables traders to follow and mimic how other successful traders are investing within the community.
eToro Review: Top Takeaways for 2021
eToro is in our top picks for its simple and stress-free copy-trading platform, where traders can copy the trades of other investors across over over 2000 financial instruments, including stocks, FX, CFDs, ETFs and popular cryptocurrencies.
Founded in 2007, eToro is regulated in two tier-1 jurisdictions and one tier-2 jurisdiction, placing the company as a safe broker for trading forex and CFDs. In terms of price, eToro is slightly more expensive than most of its competition, despite the fact that it recently cut spreads and initiated zero-dollar commissions when trading US stocks.
We also found that eToro’s array of traditional research materials are excellent for traders of all skill categories, yet slightly limited compared to other brokers.
Overall, less experienced traders may find the user-friendly platform an additional benefit. That said, we do not recommend eToro for active or high-volume traders as higher spreads and small maximum trade sizes will be a limiting factor.
eToro ranks at number two in our broker comparison analysis. Overall, this broker offers competitive fees, a great mobile app, a wide range of investment options, and a copy trading feature.
Over the years, eToro has gained their reputation as a safe and attractive brokerage for both beginner and experienced day traders. This is down to their low entry barriers and user-friendly platform.
We recommend eToro as the best broker for copy trading, stocks, and cryptocurrencies.
Is eToro a Safe Platform?
eToro is regarded as a low-risk broker, with an overall Trust Score of 93/99. eToro is not currently publicly traded but is planning on doing so, and does not operate a bank. eToro is an authorised broker by two Tier-1 regulatory bodies (high trust), one Tier-2 regulatory body (average trust), and one Tier-3 regulatory body (low trust). The Tier-1 regulators that eToro are authorised by are as follows: Australian Securities & Exchange Commission (ASIC) & Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Here is a list of the brokers registered subsidiaries and its corresponding regulatory body.
United Kingdom: eToro (UK) Ltd. regulated by Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
Australia: eToro AUS Capital Pty Ltd. regulated by Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)
Cyprus: eToro (Europe) Ltd. regulated by Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC)
United States: eToro USA LLC regulated by US FinCEN
Investment Choice
eToro
Feature
FX Trading
Yes
CFD Trading
Yes
Islamic Trading Account
Yes
Total Tradable Symbols
2314
Total Forex Pairs
47
US Stock Trading (non CFD)
Yes
Cryptocurrency (CFD and non-CFD)
Yes
Social Trading/ Copy Trading
Yes
Commission & Fees
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
As with most other CFD brokers, eToro do not charge any brokerage fees, custody fees or collection fees. This is because CFD trading does not involve the physical purchasing of any financial asset. Rather, CFD traders are only purchasing a contract, of which the price is based on the underlying asset they wish to trade.
The broker however does charge the following fee’s which will be explained in further detail below.
Spread
Overnight fee
Withdrawal fee
Inactivity fee
Spreads
Spreads are a type of commission charged by any CFD broker for opening a trade. This commission is applied to each individual financial instrument, and is calculated by taking the difference between the bid price (or sell price) and the ask price (or the buy price).
The difference between the buy and sell price is called the spread and it is the cost that traders will take for opening a trade as a consequence of the commission applied by the broker through this differential.
Most online brokers usually charge this spread at the opening of the trade. For this reason, the trader’s position starts at a loss. However, eToro works slightly differently and deducts this spread when the trade is closed, not when it is opened.
Note that spreads will vary from one instrument to another. For example, instruments with high liquidity (where there are more participants in the market, such as the EUR/USD currency pair ) the spread will be lower. On the other hand, instruments with less liquidity will come with higher spreads and therefore bear a larger commission.
You can view the list of eToro instruments and their spreads on the eToro website:
The Swap is another type of fee charged by e-Toro, also called a roll over or an overnight fee. All three terms are correct and synonymous with each other.
A swap fee is a payment that applies if you hold a position overnight. CFD positions that stay open overnight incur a small fee, relative to the value of the position. This is essentially an interest payment to cover the cost of the leverage that you a trader may use overnight.
Withdrawal Fee
A withdrawal fee refers to the fee paid in order to withdraw funds from your trading account. Withdrawal requests at eToro are subject to a $5 withdrawal fee.
You can withdraw funds from your eToro account at any time up to the value of the balance of your account, minus the amount of margin used. You don’t need to hold any money in your account, so it’s possible to withdraw the full balance if you need to.
It’s important to keep in mind that any withdrawn funds will be sent directly to the account that was used to make the deposit. For example, if you deposited money with a credit card then the withdrawn funds will be sent to your same card.
It may take up to 1 business day for eToro to process your withdrawal request. After the request is processed and verified, the estimated time to receive payment depends entirely on your payment provider. Bank transfer/ Wire transfer can take between 3-8 working days. e-Wallets such as Neteller, Paypal, Webmoney and Skrill is a much faster method, typically taking 1-2 days to receive your funds.
Platform and Resources
eToro’s main innovative feature is combining self-directed trading and copy trading under a unified trading experience.
Simplicity: At the core of eToro’s trading platform experience is the ease at which users can execute basic operations and complete tasks quickly, such as making watchlists and adding instruments by searching available markets. Such design qualities assisted eToro to rank Best in Class in the Ease of Use category, and also for beginners in 2021.
CopyPortfolios: Another innovative tool innovative tool is CopyPortfolios, where eToro groups active traders into a single fund you can copy trade. This feature helps to bridge the gap for traders who want to use eToro on a casual/passive basis. These traders can can create a portfolio based entirely on one or more CopyPortfolios. As for self-directed traders, they can use CopyPortfolios to diversify their trading, making this feature a useful for all eToro clients.
Cryptocurrency Resources: eToro traders can take advantage of crypto trading ideas and copy other individual crypto traders across over 90 supported cryptocurrency pairs. Investors that are looking to hold the underlying crypto assets, eToroX offers the eToro Mobile wallet app. This app acts as a custodian using a multi-signature scheme and nearly matches the brand’s forex mobile app.
Copy trading structure: All trades on eToro are done so manually. Fully automated trading systems, such as those supported on MetaTrader are not supported at eToro. Therefore, when you copy another trader on eToro, you can be sure they are placing each trade manually.
eToro Gallery
Research
eToro’s overall research and analysis tools are competitive but not quite the best in class.
Research tools: eToro offers a standard economic calendar, earnings reports calendar, news headlines, daily market analysis series, and podcasts. Although with that said, several of these features are not directly integrated into the eToro platform
Fundamental Analysis: It should be noted that eToro does a great job incorporating fundamental analysis into its trading platform for stock trading. However, eToro is still trailing behind considerable against market leaders such as IG and Saxo Bank in this category.
Wall Newsfeed: eToro offers a Twitter-style wall feed of collective commentaries for any given instrument. This public feed appears as a stream of updates from other eToro traders, giving you an understanding of what other traders are posting about in the eToro network. The content itself is sourced by eToro users and can differ in quality. Whilst this feature is certainly unique; we find that the content generated by in-house analysts or third-party professionals tend to be of higher quality, on average.
Educational Resources
Weekly webinars are on offer at eToro, as well as a respectable range of educational content on its blog. This includes material from other categories like research and company announcements. The one critical downside is navigation; filtering and browsing to find what you want is difficult because education is not centralized in one spot.
Educational articles: On its crypto blog, there are just a handful of articles under a dedicated “Education” link from the main drop-down menu. Whereas the main eToro site has video tutorials and a “Trading School.”
Integrated educational content: eToro takes a step beyond standard explanatory text found alongside an instrument’s details section. Rather than just listing the contract specifications next to its symbols, eToro provides extra information for beginners to learn about these trading instruments, including reasons to consider before trading.
Trading School: There are a handful of videos under eToro’s “Trading School” series, which are quite basic in terms of content. There are a good number of videos on its YouTube channel, including seven archived webinars, along with content covering cryptocurrencies and stocks, along with platform tutorials.
Mobile Trading
In summary, eToro has done a great job with its mobile trading experience. Testing the mobile app on Android and Apple iOS, eToro keeps the look and usability of the web version, including a dark and light theme.
Charts and Indicators: Like the rest of the mobile app, the charts and were highly responsive and matched the web platform, even though only five indicators are present on the app, compared to 67 on the web. However, drawing tools were missing from the app, and would be a welcome improvement. Otherwise, the charts in the mobile app are nicely integrated and function excellently. This is despite the lack of drawing tools.
Crypto-currency wallet: The eToro Wallet is an independent mobile app where traders can deposit and withdraw actual cryptocurrencies that are held by eToroX, which acts as the custodian of their private keys and broker. The eToro Wallet highly resembles the look and feel of the eToro mobile application, including support for social trading.