Is Etoro Safe ? Scam or Legit Broker?

Many traders ask whether is eToro safe or not ?

Is it a legit broker or a scam ?

If you try to figure out if eToro broker is a scam or not, this review will help you make a decision.

eToro Pros & Cons

Visit eToro.com

77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Financial Assets

At the moment, you can trade the following assets :

1. Forex currency pairs

• major pairs include combinations of: EURO, USD, CHF, JPY,
• exotics:  AUD, CAD, NZD New Zealand, CNH China, SEK Sweden, NOK Norway, ZAR (South Africa), RUB (Russian Rubel), HKD (HongKong Dollar), TRY Turkey, MXN Mexico, SGD Singapore Dollars, PLN Poland, HUG Hungary

2. Real Cryptocurrencies >> without leverage:

• • Bitcoin, Litecoin,  Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Cardano ADA, Iota, Stellar Lumens, EOS, Nio, ZCash, Binance Coin, Uniswap,  Chainlink, Tezos, Dogecoin, TRon
  • You buy real cryptocurrencies with minimum investment of $10 for each trade
  • No leverage

3. Real stocks from 13 stock exchanges around the world, including NYSE (not only CFDs like with other brokers)

4. CFDs Stocks with leverage max 5:1

5. CFDs on commodities (gold, silver, oil,copper, natgas, platinum)

6. CFDs on stock indices (13 stock indices available: US Dollar Index, NSDQ100,SPX500 Dow Jones 30, France CAC40, EUSTX50, DAX, FTSE100, China50, Madrid, Tokyo225 etc.)

7. CFDs ETF Exchange Traded Funds – 83 ETFs, mostly from iShares

Charting technical analysis tools

Charting was almost flawless, there are all main chart types to choose from whether you fancy the classic candlestick, bar, line, hollow candle,  mountain etc they have it all. Y

You can also switch between various time frames starting at  1 minute all the way up to 1Week. It was also easy to zoom in and out.

Again, it is not the Metatrader 4, but 8 out of 10 traders will be satisfied.

How to trade stocks with eToro

You have two options:

• Trade real stocks, without leverage >>
  1. You are buying underlying stock with leverage 1:1
  2. Minimum investment per trade is $500
  3. You can set STOP LOSS & TAKE PROFIT levels
  4. Decide between investing $XY amount or buy XY stocks
• Trade CFDs on stocks with leverage up to 1:5 >>
  • Leverage 1:2 or 1:5 if you are in Europe
  • Minimum investment per trade is just $100
  • You can set STOP LOSS & TAKE PROFIT levels
  • Decide between investing $XY amount or buy XY stocks

Invest in CopyPortfolios™

Do you want to invest like a hedge fund ? … then read this.  These are pre-made portfolios of assets grouped into bundles where each bundle represents multiple markets.

Examples:

• CryptoPortfolio – consists of crypto assets
• Driverless – invest into self driving cars stocks
• CannabisCare – tries to monetize the recent medical cannabis hype by investing into the stocks of the top performing medical cannabis companies
• PanicMode – this portfolio is for investors that have anxiety of the future .. I guess this portfolio should stay strong in case of the next economic crisis

Main Features:

eToro demo account

Before you decide to deposit real cash, you can play on practice demo account with $10.000 virtual cash. We tested eToro demo account and luckily all functionalities and perks that are at disposal in real version were also available demo! Meaning, you can let the trades run overnight, copy top investors, place your own trades and strategies without any problem.

Demo account seems to be available without time restriction, so it is completely up to you whether you deposit in 10 days or later.

How to deposit real money 

1. Login to your PROFILE
2. Click the “Deposit Funds” button at the bottom left
3. Currently the minimum first deposit amount is $50. Select the payment method and enter the AMOUNT you want to deposit into eToro. We recommend either your local deposit options or the Skrill or credit card method (Visa, MasterCard etc.) the money will be available immediately within few minutes and you are ready to start trading. Another good way is to choose PAYPAL or Skrill according to whether or not you already have an account. eToro gives you also plenty local deposit options that vary country to country. When WIRE TRANSFER is selected, it may take several days for money to arrive, and further banking fees may apply.

Minimum deposit 

Minimum deposit is $50.

Nevertheless if you deposit $200 or $50 this will be enough to copy just 1 trader! So keep it in mind.

My personal trading strategy is always about “risk diversification” so when I trade I rather diversify the risk of loss and choose 4-5 solid investors to copy with $200 per head. That is $1000 investment spread across 5 investors.

Again, that is just my way of trading, if you dont like this approach, you can invest the absolute minimum and invest $200 into one trade.

But why would you put all your eggs into one basket ?

Or you can of course do your own trading with your own strategies inside the platform and don’t copy anyone.

Deposit methods available

1. Wire Transfer
2. Paypal (available in EU, Australia and partly Asia)
3. Credit card (in EU it is Visa, Mastercard, DinersClub, Maestro)
4. UnionPay
5. Skrill
6. Neteller
7. Yandex
8. Webmoney

How to make a withdrawal from eToro

You earned a nice profit and now want to withdraw money from eToro right ?

All regulated brokers have to comply with strict regulation rules concerning KYC (Know Your Customer). That means you will need to verify your account either before your first deposit or before withdrawal.

How to verify your trading account

You need to prepare these documents to ensure smooth trading account owner verification:

1. Passport or National ID copy (both sides in high resolution)
2. Address proof (any sort of Utility bill – electric, gas, mobile phone or account statement with blurred amounts is OK)

Also note that withdrawal fees may apply.

Compare eToro vs. Competition

We compared eToro vs. Plus500 for you.

Is eToro a Scam?

Many people in online forums ask, whether eToro is a scam or not. Well based on what we saw during the testing, eToro is NOT a scam. At the end of 2018 when I reviewed eToro, communication with their customer support team was smooth and fast and the platform was working fine too without requotes, hunting for stop-loss or other shady practices that you encounter with brokers from some small tiny unregulated jurisdictions like Belize or Seychelles.

Remember that many eToro broker reviews that can be found across the web were written by traders who gave up on trading, who had no trading strategy, no prior education, they know nothing about risk and money management and just gamble.

On the other hand there are tons of reviews that are positive and these are from traders who use their brain and copy the right persons with a clear strategy in mind. During 2019 review we have faced no difficulties with eToro broker. We do all the reviews with the end customer in mind, therefore we want to review depositing, trading and finally also withdrawal process. All was smooth in eToro’s case.

Nowadays forex scam is not happening among regulated brokers and eToro is CYSEC and since last year even ASIC regulated forex broker which is pretty serious regulator if you ask me.

Open FREE eToro Demo Account

77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

eToro review summary

The main goal of this review was to demonstrate how eToro trading platform works and how to make copytrading feature profitable for you.

In my opinion eToro works great for traders who want to trade forex, crypto  or even real stocks on a solid trading platform.

We recommend eToro specifically for forex, real stocks and crypto trading, as it seems that this company invests a lot into these offerings. According to my information just during this year they have added most popular crypto currencies into their trading portfolio + they have launched real stocks trading and added many new forex currency pairs.

When we talk about the eToro platform itself, I personally think it is very intuitive, meaning you will find anything very quickly without a lot of search. All items were found during the review exactly where you would expect it to be!

Especially the newbies who have not yet developed a sense of complex perception of trading,will for sure benefit from intuitive and easy to absorb visual processing of trading data across the whole eToro platform.

I think you will  need maybe one afternoon of playing with demo account to understand how things work on eToro platform.

Reading the eToro’s reviews across the fx forums I think the main eToro’s success comes from smartly implemented copytrading feature, low min.deposit and good customer support. Min.trade requirements are micro lots btw which makes sense if you are just starting out.

Advanced forex traders who decide to join eToro, could benefit from being copied by others (remember that eToro pays you for each copier).  So if you are good at multiplying money by trading, you should give eToro a try.

Veterans and very experienced forex traders may find eToro more expensive than their favorite ECN brokers UK and they could be also missing Metatrader 4 or cTrader trading platforms.

About Author

Edward Kendy

Edward Kendy (MBA) is a CEO and the head of forex brokers research at BestOnlineForexBroker.com with 17 years of experience in personal finance and veteran forex trader.
 
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Email Contact : edward @ bestonlineforexbroker.com

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