Has anybody tried eToro social trading platform?

Like what the rest says, eToro is a good playing ground where you get to copy popular investors. Kind of a no-brainer.

Always select copy open trades when copying anybody as the investors have most likely opened a ton of positions with a substantial amount of their balance into a portfolio of companies, currency pairings etc. Not doing so will lower the performance of your capital in most cases.

There are no commission fees for trades, but the spreads are less favourable as compared to other platforms. Withdrawal fees is fixed at USD 5 per withdrawal.

Read more about eToro: https://guidesify.com/blog/2017/03/16/top-ways-...

Like if it works!​​​

Personally tried and lost a lot of money (about 20% of what I deposited).

Copy trade seems so brainless, just copy someone with returns of more than 10% or 20% in the past year and you know you're on your way to a Lambo.. right? Wrong.
Because the problems with copy trading are as follows:

1. Time of entry - if you are to copy someone who started from a clean slate, that's fine.. but for someone who seemingly has a fantastic return of 20% so far, you need to be careful when u copy.. this is because you might be buying the same shares he owns, at a 20% premium of what he paid.
2. Copy open trade or don't copy? so with point 1, you'll say, fine, then I don't copy open trade. But the catch is that most traders with good returns are hodlers, meaning, more than 90% of his cash is already in shares, hence, if u copy without the open trades, only 10% of ur cash is being used and the rest of the 90% are just sitting and doing nothing.

3. Fund top up - another issue with some Traders have great results because they top up their funds which artificially inflates their returns. Imagine copying someone who has 95% in shares - that's good if the bull is running, but when the market is down, u don't have the buying power. That's when many investors start topping up their accounts, and basically, u can choose/don't choose to top up. If you do, you have to allocate to them more 'share' of your portfolio to them, if you do not, you can't follow the following trades with them. Big dilemma.

4. Diversify your portfolio? - that's what they love to tell u, just diversify and u diversify ur risk - this thinking is not wrong, if I put $500 in 10 investors at a starting capital of $5,000, what can go wrong right? even if 1 loses all 100%, you would only lose 10% value. Easy to uds, but what if it was not the best strategy? Why? because there are 2 types of investors u can invest in, holders or Traders. If you allocate 50% or more to holders, when the market goes down, most of them go down. But why more than 50% to holders? Because they are less risky. If u allocate more to Traders (those who plays forex and etc), they tend to not have those 20-30% historical returns and hence, no certainty in returns. So in sum, diversity might be a double edge.

overall, maybe because I lost money that's why I'm salty. But my take is if all you Wan do is to copy trade, then go for something simple like auto wealth or stash away. Because after all, these ppl u put ur money with are retail investors.

finally, if you don't trust what I say. Try searching for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 TOP Traders. Most are never there to stay. Often, the 2016 guy is gone and probably non-existent by now.