Often, many people express their interest and need to participate in financial markets but have an inadequate real idea of how and where to start the trade. If you are considering taking part in online Forex accounts, eToro is one such account that may blow your doors open and provide you an opportunity to trade online.
With over 1.8 million clients spanning across hundreds of countries, eToro is undoubtedly the world’s largest online foreign exchange broker. The platform offers you the chance to familiarize and have a good test of their software before investing and trading with real money. The opportunity is provided via a free account which will:
- Help you learn to invest in people, rather than currencies
- Offer a list of the best traders to copy
- Take you through the company building process as a CEO
- Offer you a succinct course
Sound Easy Enough?
Nonetheless, attaining healthy and steady gains is not all that straightforward. You have to go through a learning curve. The whole journey of making real money and, of course, enjoying the entire experience, entails making some beginner mistakes. Novice eToro investors may find the platform and the whole online trading concept through something like Forex trading a daunting task.
Therefore, this eToro review of the best trader accounts will help you work out the minimum deposits you should make, how to make the most of these amazing trading platforms, improve your trading experience, and get to understand a little more… and well on your way to becoming a successful trader yourself.
However, if taking the time to learn and understand through your on rookie mistakes is a tall order to you, then you can still leverage in the CopyTrader wizard provided by the eToro platform.
Therefore, based on my personal experience trading on eToro, I have made a compilation of the 10 best eToro trader accounts to copy. In a bid to help other people get the best result within the shortest time possible, this guide delves into the best eToro trader accounts to follow. But first, let’s get an in-depth understanding of what eToro is.
eToro Explained
eToro can be described as an open and accessible trading platform that integrates a social element into investing. They can be described, in other words, as the Facebook for trading. Developed in 2006, eToro is currently the largest investment network in the world, with more than 400 million trades and a community of over four million users so far.
The eToro platform and the broader scope of social investing have widely been covered by highlighted by mainstream media. This includes the most recent documentary by the BBC, termed as Traders: Millions by the Minute (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04j52br).
Perhaps, the most distinctive feature of this platform is CopyTrader, which enables you to sort through other platform users and see transaction history, including the much they have made/lost over a given instance. However, that does not end here! The feature also allows you to allocate some of your funds to automatically copy the trades of someone with the look you prefer.
The popular ‘investor program’ is another big plus. It rewards users according to the number of copiers they have. The reward is in form of a monthly commission of up to ten thousand dollars a month. Also, the program serves an incentive that fosters responsible and safe trading.
So, with the copying and social features, you need very little financial knowledge to get started. However, you will learn a lot relatively quickly. Your demo account will offer most of the things you need to know. Selecting the right copy trader is profoundly important and some aspects should guide your copy trading decision.
The Art Of Copy Trading
Copying other good traders is the simplest technique to invest in this platform and forms the most recommended practice for novice investors. When you copy a trader, every trade executed by them is simultaneously initiated in your account too and closed when they end it.
It is all proportional to the percentage of your funds you allocate to them but, eventually, you will realize a constant rate of return with them. Finding dependable traders to copy on this platform is not always as straightforward and simple as it may appear. In contrast, you need to understand what to look for, including what to remain clear of.
Why Should You Select The Best Trader To Follow?
Most of the beginner eToro investors make this simple common mistake: Being a sheep. Often, when venturing into the ‘people’ segment looking for a trader to follow, it is intuitive to sort the list based on the most copied and blindly follow the top results. You would assume that the most copied traders have a great deal of following for a reason, right? Well, this is the perhaps the crowd’s wisdom.
But, in reality, most individuals on eToro are complete novices and do not understand what they are doing. When a few individuals follow a trader on wrong grounds, that trader can go viral rather quickly with exponentially more followers copying suit without incurring their independent thinking and assessment. Having cautioned against consistently sub-standard traders, the other dire pitfall that hit beginners is over-trading.
It is extremely tempting to continuously check how much you have made or lost after every few hours and even more enticing to tinker. It is worth mentioning that no investor will ever profit every week or month; therefore, I highly recommend that you take a medium or long time approach.
The approach requires discipline and patience, but you’ve higher chances of experiencing better profits over time. Bizarrely, the practice of blind copy trading happens often and I feel the need to explain the process I take when copy trading.
Finding The Best Trader To Follow
To begin with, click the ‘Copy People’ icon on the platform’s sidebar. Simply scroll through the page for promising and trending investors. Also, you can apply eToro’s advanced search feature that allows you to alter everything in blue to meet your preferred criteria in the prospective traders to copy.
Then click ‘go!’ to obtain a list of traders matching your criteria and sorted according to the number of followers they have. Use the top filters to drill down further.
Tips And Attributes Of The Best eToro Trader To Follow
There is a substantial choice of traders, otherwise called professional investors or gurus, available on this social trading platform that you can copy. However, before you begin looking, ensure to consider your distinct risk profile and expectations (i.e., do you intend to double your investment within the shortest period possible or are you looking to attempt and make some steady gains over time?) After determining that, how then do you navigate about choosing the traders to copy who suit your criteria?
Following, Are Some Tips And Aspects We Consider When Selecting The Best Traders We Copy:
- How long has the investor been trading on the platform? The longer the experience, the better since more investors will have attempted to copy them. Of course, it is possible that an investor can get lucky and make gains a few months consistently. With time, though, it gets more challenging to make steady returns and that is what distinguishes professional traders from gamblers. Ensure to copy established investors having at least one-year history on the network of social trading.
- How many trades have they done so far? In addition to the time aspect, check the aggregate number of trades transacted to date. Traders with more trades are more preferred because they signify more data, including their experience and knowledge of the market. We always preset our filter in the ‘Discover People’ wizard to only display investors 50 and above trades.
- How many trading instruments do they focus on? Most expert traders concentrate on one trading instrument (i.e., stocks, currencies or commodities). Therefore, we are always a bit skeptic about ‘professional traders’ who tend to have invested in virtually every currency pair and instrument.
- What strategy do they employ? By looking at the historical trades, try and understand the investor’s methodology. We like to shun traders whose strategy or system entails adding to losing positions so that they recover when the market exhibits a small correction; that is, Martingale-type of trading strategies. Try to look at their monthly performance tables and implore the time history for the instant when they a substantial monthly. Did the trader open multiple successive positions in the same points at the same instant or not?
- Besides, try to find out whether an investor is likely to incur a loss of their full balance (and consequently your allocation). Yes, that’s right! As hard as it may sound, this is undoubtedly the main difference between profiting and losing money on eToro. For example, if you had made an investment of $1,000 in every one of the ten most popular eToro professionals on 1st June 2012, you would have incurred a loss of $763 by the 31st of May 2013 which is 12 months later.
Nonetheless, if you had shunned following michaelfx, who completely lost your allocation, you would actually be profiting. Looking at the investor’s trading history (as illustrated above) and assessing their risk and strategy of managing money (i.e. looking at historical drawdown, risk per day, average exposure, etc.) should offer you a good pointer on the probability of their account being blown.
- The best professional traders have low daily and weekly drawdowns (essentially how much they have been ‘down’ in a given period). The optimum historical drawdown percentage provides a significant risk pointer (daily, weekly, and annually). Shy away from anything more than 10%.
- Ridiculous returns? Well, that’s a red flag. If you see a trader with 1,000% plus returns within a short period, this signifies unsustainable luck that can only be attained by being reckless. Look for an investor having a historical performance graph that displays a steady line upwards as opposed to one with large abrupt peaks and drops.
- Avoid traders having 100% or >90% winning ratio. It is perfectly prudent to close some trades highlighted in the red, which is a sign of experience and discipline. While gamblers and learners chase their losses, savvy traders know when to let go and comprehend that not trade ought to be closed in gains.
- Are they communicative? You may want to follow and copy a trader who can take you through the learning process and is willing open up regarding their trading strategy and market view. Someone who doesn’t reply to you messages either doesn’t care (and likely to trade so too) or doesn’t know how to answer due to lack of clue as to what they are doing.
The Top 10 eToro Accounts To Copy And Follow
Based on overall performance and long-term trading history, the following accounts warrant their inclusion as the 10 best eToro traders to follow:
4exPirate
This professional investor has been trading on this platform for almost four years. They are among the few reasonable investors we have discovered so far (3-day average duration). Their results don’t depict a very consistent look over the entire period. Profits were substantially higher in the first two years than over the previous two years.
However, throughout the 4 years, they have maintained positive results. Therefore, their money management strategy tends to be quite stable, yielding continuous returns using relatively low risk. 4exPirate’s average score stands at 2 and optimum drawdown during the previous 12 months was over 5%. They also generated some decent profits on eToro in the past 12 months considering the corresponding low drawdown.
Venomt09
Also known as Martin Tremblay, Venomt09 has been trading on the platform for over five years. They have experienced some of the most incredible results in the past years as depicted by a positive (240% gain in 2014). Nevertheless, these results were also attained against fairly high-risk levels and drawbacks.
The most interesting part about Martin Tremblay’s eToro is that their score of risk has fallen from a high of 7/8 to an optimum of 3 over the previous 12 months. Their maximum drawback in the course of the past year is also below 10%.
Therefore, though the returns for 2015 and 2016 have been less than some of the past years, it seems they have been attained by incurring much less risk. This investor leaves trades open for one week on average and mainly trades in currencies. Their number of followers and copiers has also been growing steadily.
AleksanderPozvek (Golddigger15)
Golddiger15 is an eToro investor from Slovenia and has been trading since July 2015. Over the period, the trader has secured 69.9% profitable weeks. Following is a brief highlight of his trading stats over the past 12 months.
Trading Results — His trading results exhibits ups and downs during the 12 months but a great deal of the months manifested profitable outcomes, with an overall in the year 2015 is 37.56% and 30.29 in 2016. In the periods of January and May 2016, the trader had a negative outcome of -9.86% and -1.96% respectively. Nonetheless, he experienced 13.19% in February, 11.52% in March, 3.11 in April, 7.69% in June, 3.19% in July, and 1.26% in August.
Risk Level — The trader subscribes to a medium-risk strategy and his level of risk differed between 30% — 70% over the last one year. The average level of risk of the last seven days was 30 %.
Trade Allocation — Aleksander’s trading portfolio comprises entirely of currencies, particularly NZD/USD trades to be specific.
Percentage Of Profit And Loss — To date, he has invested an aggregate of 351 NZD/USD trades and 98.29% of them have yielded positive returns, providing an average gain of 10.33% and an average loss percentage of negative 39.38%.
Drawdown — The optimum daily drawdown is -13.78% and the optimum weekly drawdown is -17.32%.
Ruben Sanchez Espinoza (Nebur187)
Nebur187, also referred to as Ruben Sanchez Espinoza, is a trader on eToro from Paraguay. Ruben began trading on eToro back in 2014 and, since that time, 65.45% of his trading weeks turned out as profitable. Below is a summary of Ruben’s trading results through the period.
Trading Result — Although he didn’t trade frequently during the one and a half years, but from May 2015, he began trading consistently. Besides June 2015, Ruben secured positive outcomes in the rest of the trading months and scored an overall result of 312.16% in 2015. Even in the year 2016, Ruben manifested a positive result in the entire trading months, with the exception of March and April during which the result was -26.66% in May, 81.22% in June, 29.96% in July, and 2.55% in August.
Risk Level — Ruben has employed a medium-risk approach over the past 4 months. Nonetheless, his risk level changed between 50% — 80% over the last 12 months. The past 7 days’ risk level averaged to 70%.
Trade Allocation — A lot of the trades in his portfolio comprises of currencies, denoting 99.67% of the portfolio. The remaining 0.31% of the portfolio includes commodities.
Percentage Of Loss And Profit — Ruben has placed 321 trades in total so far, 86.29% of which turned out as profitable. These trades manifested an average of 15.77% in profit and -37.50% losses. Ruben frequently traded GBP/USD, USD/JPY and EUR/USD, on which he got an average return percentage of 17.56%, 2.35%, and 1.05% respectively. He also had an average loss percentage of -42.86% (EUR/USD), -39.50% (GBP/USD) and for USD/JPY, it was -0.5%.
Periodical Drawdown — He depicted an optimum daily drawn of -35–24% and the optimum weekly drawdown of -42.57%.
DietmarRost (Tsord2011)
He is a Trader from Germany and has taken part in eToro trading since February 2011. So far, 61.11% of Dietmar’s trades have happened to be profitable. Diemar also goes by the name Tsord2011. To get an in-depth understanding of performance, let us consider a succinct summary of Diemar’s trading stats.
Trading Results — Despite the fact that his trading outcome towards the end of 2011 and 2012 was negative, everything changed from the year 2013 onwards. He secured an incredible 124.62% in 2013, which is 69.36% in 2014, and 50.75% in 2015 and in 2016; it was the highest (697.61%). In all the trading months of 2016, he got positive outcomes. This was 128.97% in January, 20.22% in February, 29.16% in March, 6.81% in April, 17.11% in May, 58.42% in June, and 13.97% in July.
Risk Level — Dietmar adheres to a medium-risk approach, with an average risk level of between 50% and 70%. Over the last 7 days, he averaged a risk level of 50%.
Trade Allocation — He has sustained a diversified portfolio. Of his portfolio, 68.05% comprises indices, 2.75% represents stocks, 27.93% currencies, 0.22% represents people, and 1.09% entails commodities.
Percentage Of Profit And Loss — He has placed 917 trades in total and averaged 40.32% in overall profit while experiencing an average loss percentage of -51.38%. Also, he frequently traded DJ30, EUR/USD and GER30, for which he received an average return percentage of 17.96%, 14.56%, and 107.60%, whereas he posted an average loss percentage of 118.38%, and -73.14% respectively.
For daily and weekly drawdown, he posted a maximum daily drawdown of -25% and a maximum weekly of -44.70%
Alberto Bosio (Tradingrelax)
Bosio is an eToro investor and a trader by the trade name tradingrelax. His presence on the platform dates back to January 2013 and up to date, 63.64% of Alberto’s trading weeks have confirmed to be profitable. Read along to find out his trading stats over the period.
Trading Result — His performance has been outstanding since the very day he joined eToro. Though the overall result in 2013 was negative, that is -9.06%, the trading outcome in 2014 was 16.52%. It was 15.11% in 2015 and, in the year 2016, he secured positive results in their entire trading months. This was 1.88% in January, 0.29% in February, 1.32% in March, 0.63% in April, 1.12% in May, 2.36% in June, and 1.32% in July.
Risk Level — Alberto follows a low-risk practice and, in the course of the past one year, his risk level fluctuated between 10% and 30%. Nonetheless, the last 7 days averaged to 40% in risk level.
Trade Allocation — The trader has sustained a properly diversified portfolio. Looking at his portfolio, 52.98% denotes currencies, 33.38% represents indices, 6.85 consists of stocks, and 6.53% comprises commodities while 0.30% consists of individual investors.
Profit And Loss Percentage — Alberto has placed an aggregate of 674 trades, of which he realized an average of gain of 3.48% and the average loss of -20.86%. He commonly traded GER30, EUR/AUD, and EUR/USD, on which he got an average profit of 2.98%, 23.22%, and 4.42% respectively. On the other hand, the average loss evidenced was 129.62% for (EUR/USD), -15.72% (GER30) and for EUR/AUD, it was 0%.
Daily And Weekly Drawdown — The highest drawdown was -2.07% while the lowest weekly drawback was -3.87%.
Audrey Chantal MAURY (FranceRealEstate)
FranceRealEstate has been in existence on eToro o trading platform since October 2015. Over the past 10 months, up to 64.29% of Audrey’s trading weeks turned out to be profitable. Below is a brief highlight of her trading performance.
Trading Result — Looking at her trading outcomes since October 2015, it can be evidenced that she realized a positive outcome over the entire trading months, with the exception of February and November. The outcome was 43.19% in December, 11.11% in January, 16.02% in March, 2.47% in April, 2.79% in May, 8.97% in June, and 2.31% in July. Until August 2016, her trading result was 0.97%.
Risk Level — She subscribes to rather a medium risk approach of trading. Since her joining date, she has maintained her risk level between 20% and 60%. Over the last one week, the average risk level was 30%.
Trade Allocation — The trader has sustained a properly-diversified portfolio of assets. Of her assets, 80.71% denote currencies, 12.97% represents commodities, 6.23% consists of indices and 0.08% comprises of people.
Percentage Of Loss And Profit — Until August 2016, Audrey had placed 1187 trades in total and 81.63% of them had turned out as being profitable, with an average of 17.39% in percentage profit and an average percentage loss of -149.29%. She regularly traded GBP/USD, GOLD and EUR/USD and the average profit percentage for the trades was 12.45% EUR/USD, -53.95% GBP/USD and 13.19% GOLD while the corresponding percentage loss was -47.35%, 9.20% and -14.69% respectively.
Periodical Drawdown — The daily optimum drawdown was -8.86% and the optimum weekly drawdown was -15.75%.
Dominique Claret (Dominique77)
This eToro investor goes by the trade name dominique77 and originates from France. Dominique has been trading on the platform since January 2012. Until August last year, 46.30% of Dominique’s trading weeks were profitable. Provided below is a brief snapshot of his trading performance.
Trading Result — Having a look at his trading outcome, Dominique’s performance maintained a relatively constant average all through the years. Nevertheless, he posted a negative overall trading result over the period; with the exception of 2013, where the result was 2.35%. The specific results were -59.59% in 2012, -56.76% in 2014, and -74.45% in 2015. However, Dominique really performed well in 2016, apart from January when the result was -5.27%, all other months showed positive trading results.
In January, it was 0.81%, 15.25% in March, 4.50% in April, 5.51% in May, 24.19% in June, and 9.12% in July. Regarding the risk level, the value ranged between 30% and 50% over the past one year and over the last one week, the risk level was 40% on average.
Trade Allocation — Dominique maintained a mix composite portfolio having a mix of assets. However, currencies formed a majority of his trades at 88.69% while the rest comprised 10.79% stocks and 0.60% representing people.
Percentage Of Profit And Loss — He placed an aggregate of 168 trades, out of which he got an average profit 0f 2.93% and posted an average loss of -38.38%. Most of the traded assets included USD/CAD, GBP/USD and EUR/USD and the profit on these trades averaged to 1.97%, 4.39% and 3.22% respectively. On the other hand, the average percentage loss was -32.70% EUR/USD, -50% GBP/USD, and 0% USD/CAD.
Daily And Weekly Drawdown — He posted -13.41% maximum daily drawdown and a -13.41% maximum weekly drawdown.
SuperG
SuperG refers to UK-based eToro trader that has been trading since April 2016. In the course of one year of his trading, SuperG has seen 56.14 of his trades turn out as profitable. Following is an overview of his performance over the year.
If you consider his trading outcomes, there have been variations over a time frame. The months having a positive result happen to be almost similar to the months exhibiting a negative outcome. Nevertheless, he got a positive overall outcome of 116.87% in the year 2015. In 2016, SuperG got -3.84% in January, 1.8%% in February, -2.45% in March, -6.68% in April, 22.09% in May, 7.68% in June, and 7.20 in July. His reason for following a low-risk-approach is, perhaps, the fact that he incurred a loss of -34.19% in October because of a high risk.
Risk Level — As aforementioned, he takes a low-risk approach, with the risk level varying between 40% and 70%. Over the last 7 days, the risk level averaged to 50%.
Trade Allocation — SuperG diversified his portfolio with a mix of 62.69% of the assets being currencies, 36.88% denoting indices, and 0.40% representing stocks.
Percentage profit And Loss — Of the 488 total trades placed by the trader, 87.91% of them realized positive outcomes, with average profit and loss percentages of 8.55% and -31.55% respectively. GBP/USD, EUR/USD and GER30 were three of SuperG’s frequently traded assets, which realized him an average profit of 6.87%, -25.38%, and 9.99% and an average percentage loss of -51.09%, 13.59%, and -17.50% respectively.
Periodical Drawdown — He realized a maximum daily drawdown of -13.77% and a maximum weekly drawdown of -27.12%.
Liza484
Liza484 is a Latvian eToro trader whose trading practice dates back in October 2013. During this period, 82.46% of her trading weeks have proven to be profitable, posting a 2.5- average week holding period. To get an in-depth understanding of her trades below is her performance overview.
Trading Result — During 2013 and 2014, her overall trading outcome was negative, that is -43.22% and -43.98% respectively. In the course of her first two years, Liza484 got a negative result in most of the months. She remained inactive during the months of May and October 2015; and got a positive result in February, April, and December while incurring negative outcomes in the months of January, March, and November.
Nevertheless, the result started changing in 2016. Again, she didn’t trade in January and February. March and April had negative outcomes of -0.20% and -6.74% respectively. However, from May onwards, her entire trading months evidenced a positive outcome; 25.01% in May, 20.25% in June and 1.62 in July.
Liza484 is a low-risk trader. At any given time, her risk level ranged between 10% and 50%. She kept her portfolio diversified; with 61% being composed of stocks, 37.38% currencies and 0.89 comprising commodities.
She placed an aggregate of 674 trades, out of which 76.71% were profitable, with a 9.15% average profit and -22.17% average losses. Her often-traded assets include TSLA, CHF/JPY and USD/CAD on which she realized 2.48%, 77.90% and 3.83% average profit percentage respectively. Also, her average loss was -88.79% on CHF/JPY, -41.79% on USD/CAD, and -3.88% on TSLA.
For the drawbacks, it was -4.35% for the maximum daily and -10.34% for the maximum weekly.
As Aside Note
There is a myriad of professional traders available on the eToro social trading platform for you to copy. Overall, the decision narrows down to what your risk profile and expectations are. Ensure to leverage in the above insights when identifying, following and copying your potential professional trader.
