eToro Review – My Experience After 2 Years of eToro

Many people have asked me how do I invest in foreign stocks. Another question that I always get asked is, “what’s my opinion of eToro?”, which I will give my honest to goodness experience with the platform.

In this blog post, I will try to be as honest as possible about my experience of using eToro for 2 years.

How Did I Found Out About eToro

I started using eToro for investing in 2017. A friend recommended it to me, telling me that it only needs $200 as a deposit. If you may know, most online stock brokerages in the US demands a lot more initial deposit. My main broker for example asks $10,000 for its initial deposit. Which not many people can accommodate. Since most of us, just wants to try investing in the US, not many of us are willing to shell out half a million pesos just for testing the waters.

So I did try using eToro for a time. I still have an account with eToro that is not yet bankrupt, fortunately.

The Platform

Its pretty straightforward. eToro has a page for your portfolio and the buying and selling stocks. They have a take-profit and cut-loss feature. Features that not many investors find useful, but traders might love.

Buying FACEBOOK stock with eToro.

Analysts Coverage

Its surprising that eToro have analyst coverage. Its pretty useful. In the Philippines, we don’t have any one central location for all the analyst forecasts, so we end up opening different stock brokerage accounts to follow the analysts we deem “good”. But in eToro its all in one page for the stock you are trying to research.

eToro research platform with analysts price estimates of stocks.

Going down the research page for FACEBOOK, you’ll see the list of analysts covering the stock. As well as their recommendation, fair value / target price and the analysis report.

List of analysts and their price estimate/fair value and recommendations.

If you find analyst report valuable, then this is a treasure trove of information for the do-it-yourself investor.

eToro’s CopyTrade

I think the most popular feature of eToro is the CopyTrade feature. Since the platform covers worldwide, there are a lot of investors and traders using it. You can see other people’s portfolio and their performance over the years. Best of all? You can copy them.

There are a lot of people making insane returns that you can copy using CopyTrade.

How eToro’s CopyTrade works?

The way CopyTrade works is just like a subscription service. You copy a trader/investor and your portfolio will mimic his portfolio. When he buys a stock, your portfolio will also buy the same stock. When he sells, yours will also sell. You get the point, its auto-pilot.

With CopyTrade, you can move on to more important things, like playing Dota or the less productive things, focusing on your job. Sky’s the limit.

Try eToro’s Trading Platform

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

What Asset Types Can You Invest in eToro

You can invest in:

  • Stocks
  • Index
  • ETF
  • Commodities
  • Currencies (FOREX)
  • Crypto

Be a Fund Manager with eToro

You can become a portfolio manager and earn 2% per year of assets under management as an eToro Popular Investor.

You can earn money by being a fund manager in eToro. When people use CopyTrade on you, you will earn a percentage of the amount that they are betting to copy you. Yes, that’s right, you make money if people copy you.

If you’re that kid in school where other students copy assignments from, its time to make money out of it.

There is a requirement if you want to be the popular investor that other people copy.

Popular Investor Requirements:

  • Equity >= $500
  • Minimum Copiers 1 (who is not a family member/relation)
  • Minimum AUM (Asset under management) $200
  • At least 2 months of stats
  • Historical and current risk score of 6 or below (including maximum risk score)
  • Your profile includes your real name, a picture of yourself and a description of your trading strategy
  • No more than 25% of your equity is copying a specific person or invested in a CopyTrade

Just like the fund managers, you will earn 2% per year of assets under management (amount that is being used to copy you).

Be a fund manager at eToro

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

My Portfolio Experience with eToro

I didn’t make use of the CopyTrade feature of eToro because I want to invest on my own. But when I started investing, there are some few things that I noticed that made me ignore eToro as a serious platform for investing long term.

My stock performance.

My stock performance suffered after 3 months, after discovering some features. You see, eToro uses margin accounts. The reason they have small initial deposits is because the $200 deposit will automatically becomes a margin account.

What margin account does is eToro loans you money so you can buy more stocks. This is no different from real estate investing where you borrow money from the bank in buying properties that are too expensive for you to buy on your own.

This is a good thing and a bad thing. Since this is a loan, you will need to pay for the interest. And the interest for a margin account in eToro is paid everyday.

Interest that you need to pay daily for holding a stock because of leverage.

For some people, like me, I don’t like margin accounts. Since I hold stocks for a very long time, holding costs will eat so much of my profits. There is a way to remove this margin in eToro, its to deposit more money into it. The last time I checked, $100,000 must be deposited in order for the leverage to be removed. It may change of course from the time of this writing and I will update this etoro review once there are rules in place.

Once you reach a certain amount, eToro will remove the leverage. Which, I am not comfortable doing, because I am already settled with my other broker who I have been with for so many years. You don’t want to go in and out of stocks just to transfer brokers. That’s not a very wise thing to do.

Update: As of Jan 2021, you can now remove leverage on your account. There is no more fund requirement to remove leverage.

My portfolio. Buying Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway.

So even if I made +76.99%, my equity is still near the $200 initial deposit. I only made $3.15 from the 76.99% in buying Berkshire stock. This is because of the margin interest ate almost $80 worth of available cash.

Try eToro Today.

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

How to Deposit Fund into Your eToro Account

This is one of the reason why I recommend eToro only if you want to get started quickly in investing in international stocks. The reason for this is this, the process of opening an international broker is long. It takes a lot of paperwork, and when you finally finish that paperwork, you now have to wire transfer the fund or money into your account. And here is the thing, you can’t do it online. The wire transfer needs to be done inside your bank, supported by a bank representative, filling up forms. And the money would be sent 2 to 3 days.

Why eToro is better for getting started fast is because, you can use PayPal or your Credit Card and you can get started immediately. Just click on the “Deposit Fund” link inside your eToro account.

Enter the amount and choose the payment method.

Get started now.
67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

Conclusion

After trying eToro for almost 2 years there are a couple of things I discovered that this platform might be a good fit for.

Testing the US Stock Market (Rating : 5 out of 5)

eToro is great for people who wants to test out the US stock market. You can get a feel for the market without having to spend lots of money opening a stock brokerage account.

Try eToro Now.

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

Traders (Rating: 5 out of 5)

eToro is great for traders. Since there is a cost in holding a stock for long term, short term traders have the advantage in this platform. Long term investors is at a disadvantage if they hold on to a stock for too long and the stock did not go up faster than the interest for the margin eats up available cash.

Portfolio Managers (Rating: 5 out of 5)

For people who want to start a fund management business, you can start with eToro. If you’re good at what you are doing (trading / investing), people will notice, and they will use CopyTrade on you. The more people do that, the more money you’ll earn.

Short Term Investors (Rating: 5 out of 5)

Its still a good platform for investors, just not the one who wants to hold on to a stock for long long years. So if you’re an investor who wants to use eToro, you might want to limit your holding period and sell at a specific number of years. As long as you keep in mind the interest payment for the margin, I think investors will still prosper in this platform.

Long Term Investors / Value Investors (Rating: 3.5 out of 5)

I don’t think long term investors would benefit from being forced into a margin account. Because of the nature of the market, long term investors might not pull the plug faster than the margin could handle. Or the stock did not go fast enough from the interest payments eating up cash. So I don’t think its a match for long term investors. But its still a good platform for testing the waters and getting the feel for investing in the United States. I will still recommend it as a starting ground for new investors in the US.

Of course, I might just be a bad investor. That is also a possibility.

You don’t really have to think really hard for this. eToro is a great platform if you want to test the waters in investing in the US stock market. Just be careful if you’re a long term investor though, you might be surprised at how fast interest payments eat up your cash. But if you’re a trader and a short term trader, try it out, you might enjoy using it.

So that’s it for my eToro review. I hope you learned something from my experience. Did you try eToro? How was your experience? Leave your answer in the comments section below.

Try eToro Today and Invest.
( 67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. )

Disclaimer: Your capital is at risk. When you invest in stocks/ETF etc. Cryptoassets are a highly volatile unregulated investment product. No EU investor protection. Your capital is at risk.

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. 67% 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.

This content is intended for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or investment recommendation.

Cryptoassets are unregulated and can fluctuate widely in price and are, therefore, not appropriate for all investors. Trading cryptoassets is not supervised by any EU regulatoryframework.  Past performance is not an indication of future results.

84 comments

  1. This is what I need. An honest review of eToro. As a long term investor, this is my same sentiments. Yung mga charges kasi yun ang una kong tinitingnan. As much as possible, if I can get away from it, ayaw ko mag bayad ng mga fees (hehe). Good thing example kay First metro, upon reaching a certain investment, free na ang access ng Pro version. I’m plan to check out and test the waters for US Stock Market is still next year pa naman. Had you tried other stock markets, let say Asia? I’m curious about HOSE of Vietnam eh. The country as a whole kasi has good potentia.

    1. Yes. eToro is great if you want to test and feel international markets.

      I’m talking with an investor that is investing in Vietnam. I’ll see if we could invest there. I’ll make a post about it, if it turns out good.

    2. Hello are still active in etoro?.Can i ask about your experiences in etoro before until now?Thank you so much.

      1. I never had to use leverage. I opened account in eToro around September 2019 and initially had $500 or so. You have daily tax if you use CDFs, stocks with multiplayer of more than 1 or if you short sell.
        In short – when you buy the “underlying asset” (only stock with multiplier of x1, not index/ETF/Gold/Oil/….) you get $0 daily taxes.

  2. You can set leverage to x1 regardless of the amount. If you only use eToro to buy stocks (no shorting/selling), and use no leverage (x1), eToro does not charge any fees, and the spread effectively small. For example, as of today, Google’s buy and sell prices are $1429.48 and $1432.30 respectively: the spread is $2.82, which is around 0.2%.

    Personally, I earned last year (2019) investing in Facebook, NVIDIA, Google, and Apple. By biggest profit was for Apple when I bought it at the low of $150 and sold at around $200 – gain of 33%. In hindsight, I should have held long term; right now, Apple’s price is $300, so I would have doubled my money if I held my position.

  3. how does the withdrawal work if i may ask for here in the philippines.
    It seems there are many tutorials and reviews on trade and funding but im wondering how to accredit the money back eventually.
    Thank you

    1. Its the same way you deposit them. Just click the withdraw button on eToro and it will automatically approve the withdrawal if you used the same method when depositing.

      If you use PayPal to deposit, eToro will approve PayPal withdrawal.

  4. Hi! I have separate USD and PHP accounts in BPI. Is it advisable to source out my funding to eToro from my USD account to avoid the currency exchange fluctuations? Thank you very much!

  5. Many thank you for the review. I am a newbie in etoro and wanted to know more about the pros and cons. So far my experience with etoro has been good. But I wanted to try making a series of withdrawal if there will be no problems later on.

      1. I deposited thru paypal but withdrawn to my BPI Dollar account. You think there will be any problem? What will I do if ever?

  6. Hi. Thank you very much for this informative and rooting-from-experience post. I’m also planning to open my own eToro account this year. I plant to invest for the long-term like 10-20 years of more. I wish to only buy shares from two companies namely Amazon and Apply. I plan to buy every quarter when I have enough savings. What do you think of this strategy? Thanks po

  7. Thanks for the informative review!
    Ano mas better na platform sa opinion mo? IQ Option or eToro? I made around $400 profit sa IQ Option. Kaso nasa $15-$20 ang naging charges ko total sa 2 months kong use ng IQ option.
    P.S. I invested in netflix, amazon, AMD and ACB.

  8. this is a misleading article. you can actually invest in etoro for long term without having leverage for 50$ and does not charge any fees on that! but only a very very small spread. AND ETORO DOES NOT FORCE A CLIENT TO SWITCH INTO MARGIN ACCOUNT. CLIENT CAN DECIDE WHETHER TO GO FOR MARGIN ACCOUNT OR NOT.

    I believe all international brokers actually have the option to use LEVERAGE not only ETORO. but you have the option not to use it.

    Please correct your article!

    1. I started a few years ago, when leverage can only be removed by depositing $100k. It is a new rule by eToro where they removed the 100k fund requirement. It doesn’t mean to mislead.

  9. Hello sir. . Ganda po ng explanatiin sir. May tanong lang po ako sa leverage ng buy po ako ng 50USD with leverage x50. Nag gain po ng 30 %. Nag gain ako ng 14USD lang. Tama po ba yun? Salamat po

  10. Hi i just come across your article about Etoro.
    I personally do not recommend to use Etoro. if you are interested in buying for long/short term, you can try IG or TDameritrade which are a lot reliable, stable and reputable platforms than Etoro, especially if you are not residing in US or UK, once you got some issue, you will be left out alone, your issues will be left unhandled.
    although you can have live chat with their customer service, they just give you the sugar-coating answer. i am recently having a lot of problems with them, depositing issues, withdrawal issues, losing trades due to their technical errors (like when you close trades, those are not closed, their close button did not work). your issues are not looked into properly!
    you can invest 100 or 200USD, if you have more to invest, go to IG or TD.
    all from my own experience !

    1. I agree. eToro is best for people who just wants to try investing in the stock market quickly. I wouldn’t use it for long term investing. There are other better brokers for that. But for getting started quickly, eToro is hands down, the easiest to get started with.

      Thank you for your comment.

      1. Hello Sir can i ask you if you still active in etoro?Is it safe to invest in etoro?Mostly of the comments,reviews in the flatform lowsy costumer service, and the very very common problem is the withdrawal..Easy to deposit but in terms of withdrawal freezing,pending not working..Your reply is awaited with many Thanks.

        1. yes I am. I still have my account with them.I never had problems with withdrawal. Just like I said in the comments above, withdraw the same way you deposit the funds. If you withdraw in a different way you deposit, you will be investigated and it may take a while.

  11. Hi! Thanks for the information. How about investing in ETF, is it advisable to use eToro? Is there’s any minimum about to invest? Thank you!

  12. For deposit/withdrawal transactions, which of the following would be the best – via Paypal, credit card, local bank account in Phil. peso or local bank account in USD?

      1. Hi sir,is it ok to migrate account in uk etoro?any pros and cons?it always pop up in my account,thank you so much

  13. What if I deposited funds using my credit card, if they return it to my credit card, how will I be able to encash my money? Does it mean that I can only use the returned funds to pay for future credit card purchases? Also, is there a way that I can use another payment method like Paypal to withdraw my funds now that I have used only my credit card to deposit funds?

    1. I have not tried credit card withdrawal yet. You can use other methods to withdraw. Its just that there will be checks and it will take some time for approval.

      Yes, you can use PayPal.

  14. Hi, I hear positive feedbacks on copy trading especially from Bibiano. What’s your thought about copy trading?

    Thanks!

  15. Hi Sir, for a beginner like me this is very helpful. I would like to know more about it and have a guidance too if possible. I’ve been wanting to invest into stock market since then but this is the time i think i can do it.

  16. Nag open ako Ng account sa eToro is it normal after answering all The questions at submitting the necessary requirements it was fully verified after an hour same day. Gumagamit ba sila Ng regular landline/cellphone number when they tried to contact you? Thanks in advance sa sagot.

  17. Have you tried using local banking unit for withdrawals? What is cheapest way to make withdrawals in etoro? what are the charges? thank you. I have a very bad experience using the localbanking unit. I requested withdrawal of $100 and expecting to receive around 4700 or 4800 php depending on exchange rate. I end up receiving 3,507.35 php only and no one can give me an explanantion as to why. Not etoro or Bdo.

  18. Is it good to use eToro to invest long term (let’s say 10 years) for VOO or VTI, the Vanguard ETF? I read about this on the internet that this ETF is good to invest in and hold for long term.

    1. It depends on the amount of money invested. You can invest long term in eToro, but only if I have small amounts on money in it. If I’m going to invest longterm AND have a sizable amount of money, I will use a real US broker for that.

  19. Hello, Interesting review, but the section about stocks and margin accounts is wrong. The only time you actually loan money from Etoro is when you use *leverage* as in the example you show. When not using leverage, i.e. using a leverage of 1, there is no fee: you buy the stock.

  20. hi sir..when im done withdrawing the money from etoro going to my bdo account,is there any phil tax that can charge to me? im wondering beacause in phil local platform like bdo securities if u withdraw your capital plus ur gain or less loss there will be extra charges of taxes automatically deduct before it goes thru my bdo acount..thanks in advance🙏😊

  21. Hi, may i ask if etoro allows buying of commodities such as wheat and palladium? NOt thru CFD ?
    What is an over night fee and weekend fee? Do they apply to commodities that are not CFD?

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