Etoro & Social Trading: Here’s Everything You Need To Start

Humans have always searched for as much knowledge as possible in order to empower themselves. With online trading, there’s no difference, and people are driven by their hunger for profits.

With all that being said, not all sites out there are a good source of knowledge for your financial purposes, and you should be extra cautious while searching for info online. And that’s particularly true for broker reviews.

That is why we decided to talk about one of the most famous brokerage services available today, starting with this etoro review on advfn.com.

eToro: Foundation & Regulation

eToro is a renowned and well-regulated broker with an international reputation, emerging to be one the finest choices for beginner stock and forex trading online, and for many reasons.

Started in 2007 from an idea of the Assia brothers, Yoni and Ronen, both grown in a banking family, they found a partner in David Ring and founded RetailFX. In 2010, this brokerage service came closer to the actual trading platform and it became the eToro OpenBook social investment platform.

This broker is present worldwide with different entities and each one of those is regulated by a top tier broker. Between them we recall:

• eToro AUS Capital Pty Ltd regulated by ASIC
• eToro (Europe) Ltd: regulated by CySEC
• eToro (UK) Ltd: regulated by FCA
• eToro USA LLC: regulated by FinCEN

Furthermore, this broker complies with ESMA standards and takes very seriously traders’ fund safeness, and has implemented two essential features for them: segregated accounts and negative balance protection.

While segregated accounts are an extra-cautious precaution, taken in regards to the unlikely case of the broker’s bankruptcy in order to protect traders’ funds from liquidators, negative balance protection is fundamental to protect traders from bad investments. In fact, this feature will automatically close positions once your portfolio reaches 0, before going into the red.

eToro: A Social Trading Platform

The strongest and most renowned feature promoted on its trading platform by eToro is the idea of Social Trading itself, a new and revolutionary concept strongly implemented by the broker.

As a matter of fact, eToro has been the first to expand on the very idea of mixing social trading and stock trading by inserting social features taken straight away from the social media world . By doing so, eToro tried (and succeeded)  in making the financial market a more friendly environment.

Close to this concept stays another social-like feature called Copy Trading. In this case, we’re dealing with one of the most useful trading tools for beginners which will make it possible to gain profit from other traders investments automatically. All you need to do is to copy another trader’s portfolio, preferably from one of the so-called Top Investors, a sort of influencer made famous by their successful investments.

eToro: How To Open An Account

All you need to do to start trading with eToro and signing up with this broker is pretty standard and it will take a few minutes.

Account verification is a very important procedure and will require you to give some essential data in order to have full access to everything eToro has to offer. This will require you to:

• Give a proof of identity (POI): upload a document which includes your name, date of birth, a photograph and an issue date clearly visible. A passport is preferred and the quickest to be recognized.
• Give a proof of Address (POA): upload a document which includes your full name, address and issue date, and it cannot be older than 6 months. A Bank Statement or a bill are preferred.

Once you complete to upload all the documents required, you’ll be notified when your account is verified. The verification takes usually a few days, but you can check your verification status on the eToro platform whenever you want.