eToro boasts of having over 5 million registered clients in their books, which puts the broker among the most popular brokers worldwide. Although most renowned for their social trading platform, the company still offers straightforward trades for commodities, currencies, stocks and indices. But, size isn’t the main thing to look for in a broker, so let’s see more about the company itself.
Background
eToro was founded in 2006 as a regular investment firm. Their services were mainly Forex, but they also offered stocks, indices and commodities as CFDs. The company has headquarters in Tel Aviv, where it was started, but they are licensed by both CySEC and the FCA. With the licenses from these bodies, they can provide their services throughout Europe and many other parts of the world.
Up until 2013, eToro broker was among the few brokers who still accepted US residents as clients, but they pulled out of the US market. Nevertheless, US citizens can still use eToro’s features, because the company has a subsidiary, eToro USA. This subsidiary does not act as an independent investment firm, but rather as an Introducing Broker (IB) for the broker FX Solutions.
As an IB, eToro USA can sign up clients, but they don’t execute the trades/orders, those are transferred to FX Solutions. eToro USA is regulated by the CFTC and is a member of the National Futures Association, making it fully legitimate to operate within the US. This structure allows traders to make use of all eToro features, which we shall look at in the following sections.
From the history of the company, we can tell that eToro investing is a safe endeavor. The company has had a long history, over a decade, in the online retail finance industry, and that in itself is an achievement. Besides, an eToro review based on user feedback throughout the web is mostly positive, and you should never expect any broker to have a perfect set of reviews. Major news outlets have also praised eToro for its services over the years, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg and The Telegraph. Basically, eToro’s reputation precedes it.
Sign Up With eToro NowUnique features by eToro
In an industry with hundreds of brokers, eToro has managed to stay ahead of the game through some unique features.
Social trading
The first thing you see about eToro is their social trading features, which are frankly, remarkable. Social trading is nothing new, and it is a popular trend nowadays being provided by many brokers out there. With eToro, however, you have the advantage of numbers. As mentioned earlier, eToro has over 5 million clients registered, and that is a huge number.
To make use of this vast resource, eToro offers CopyTrader, and it is a feature that allows you to browse through the trading history of other traders. On CopyTrader, a trader’s trading history is published to show you how well they are doing. Since the data is received from other eToro clients, the information is completely accurate and can be analyzed using various tools to assess the trader’s trends.
The top performers are listed as Popular Investors, and they are the ones with the greatest success record. Nevertheless, you can find any other trader on CopyTrader. When you do find the trader whose trades you want to copy, you can do it with a click and allocate a portion of your trading capital to them. This way, you don’t risk all of your capital on eToro social trading, unless you want to.
Investments
For those who prefer to invest in ‘baskets’, eToro investments has got you covered. Just like ETFs that combine various assets into a ‘basket’, so does this feature allow you to do. By combining several assets, your investment is safer because it is unlikely that all assets in your ‘basket’ perform poorly. eToro has many assets to trade, from currencies to stocks, commodities and assets, meaning that you can invest in a wide variety of assets too. This feature is known as eToro CopyFunds, and you choose which funds suit your risk appetite. Recently, eToro have announced CryptoFund, a CopyFund which bundles the top 6 virtual currencies.
Free education
Besides the trading, there is also training available. This comes in the form of tutorials and webinars with experts. All these are to help novice traders to become better traders.
Trading conditions
Trading with eToro is great, because they are a reliable broker with excellent services. Customer support is always there for you 24/5 in case of any difficulty, but you probably won’t even need that. The abundance of trading instruments is also something to note, with many currency pairs ranging from the majors, minors to exotics. Stocks and indices from around the world can also be accessed, and so are commodities like oil, gold, etc.
eToro have their own trading platform called OpenBook, and it is available on every smart device. The problem is that it’s a proprietary software, and some may not be familiar with it. However, it has some amazing unique features, and it synchronizes with CopyTrader to allow you to copy other traders’ actions, right from one platform.
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