etoro – Page 5

eToro Trading Update – 4 December 2018

December 4, 2018 by James Woolley Leave a Comment

My Initial Impressions of eToro

I have been trading on eToro for a few weeks now (my profile is SteadyProfits), and it has been an interesting experience so far.

I have found that the platform is really easy to use, and it is really easy to open and close trades, monitor your portfolio and track your positions.

I also like the detailed stats that are provided about your trading, such as your overall win percentages, and the social aspect of the site because you can explain the rationale about your trading decisions.

Early Trading Results

As mentioned in a previous post, I only intend to trade stocks and ETFs with this account with the aim to grow my account steadily over time, primarily by trading and investing in good quality high-dividend stocks.

I have stuck to these rules so far because I have traded ISF.L (the ETF that tracks the FTSE 100), as well as Lloyds (LLOY.L), GVC (GVC.L), Imperial Brands (IMT.L) and Galliford Try (GFRD.L).

Results have been mixed because I am still limited to trading CFDs due to my relatively modest account size, which has forced me to take a relatively short-term view when finding stocks to trade due to the overnight fees that you have to pay.

Normally I would like to buy physical shares and hold on to positions for a lot longer, ie weeks, months or even years, and so as soon as I deposit a much larger amount of capital, my trading style will change and hopefully my average risk score will go down.

At the moment my risk score is 7 for this month (6 overall), presumably because my portfolio swung into profit after being 4% down at the end of last month, which is far too high, but hopefully it will come down when I start trading physical stocks instead of leveraged CFDs.

At the time of writing, I am currently up just 0.24% since I joined eToro, which is not too bad considering that many UK stocks are taking a hammering right now due to the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, but I am really confident that my profits will grow substantially in the future once the political picture becomes clearer and I have deposited more money.

Limitations of eToro

One thing I have noticed is that although you can trade more than 300 UK-listed stocks, they don’t offer markets for every single share.

For example, they don’t have a market for Taylor Wimpey (TW.L), which is a large FTSE 100-listed housebuilder that I like to trade, and if you want to trade companies that are listed on multiple exchanges, such as Vodafone and Shell, you cannot trade the UK-listed companies, which is a little annoying.

However these are just a few small complaints that I have. Overall, I am more than satisfied with the eToro platform so far.

Follow Me on eToro

If you would like to follow my journey on eToro, simply go to the eToro website and search for SteadyProfits to view my live trading results and to see my latest trades.

Past performance is not an indication of future results. This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice nor portfolio management. 81% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

I Have Joined eToro As A Trader / Investor

November 26, 2018 by James Woolley Leave a Comment

Introduction To eToro

I have known about eToro for a long time because they have always been one of the most popular social and copy trading platforms.

Indeed as a seasoned trader myself, I have always been attracted by the idea of other people copying my trades, but have never really been tempted to join eToro because the spreads are quite large for many of the major forex pairs, and they didn’t really have many other markets that you could trade.

However after discovering that they now quote prices for FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 stocks and enable you to actually own stocks and receive dividends, in addition to being able to go long or short via CFDs, I have now decided to open an account and start trading.

Trading Capital

After going through the verification process, I have already made my first deposit and started placing a few trades.

My initial deposit was actually quite small because I wanted to test out the trading platform first of all before I start trading with serious money, but I soon learned that this wasn’t really enough because the minimum trading size for stocks is $500 for new traders who have joined after 2017.

So I will be adding some more funds soon because I don’t really want to be trading stocks with leveraged CFDs because of the overnight fees that you have to pay every day.

eToro Goals and Ambitions

As I mention in my trader profile (SteadyProfits), I have been trading stocks for around 20 years now, and therefore have a lot of experience.

I have already built up a decent sum of money in my ISA over the years, but I hope to achieve the same results with eToro so that I can ultimately become a Popular Investor, build up a large following and help other people make some money.

To be honest, I also view this as an exciting challenge and a chance to really test myself, which is why I have set my sights high. My goal is simple – to become one of the top traders on eToro.

Trading Style

Although I have traded forex for many years as well, hence why I originally set up this website, I don’t currently intend to trade currencies with this account because I actually enjoy trading stocks a lot more, and don’t necessarily want to be sat in front of a computer screen all day.

I have no intention of trading cryptocurrencies either because this is far too risky for me, and in some respects is little more than gambling, even if you are using technical analysis.

So I will primarily be trading UK stocks and ETFs, and although I may make use of CFDs to open some short or medium-term trades, I will generally be buying stocks outright once I have a fully funded account to avoid paying overnight financing fees.

I always look for oversold / undervalued stocks and tend to focus on large-cap dividend stocks because this reduces my risk and gives me a steady flow of income, and by reinvesting these dividends into other high dividend stocks, I have found that you can really benefit from the effects of compounding over time.

I am prepared to hold on to stocks for days, weeks, months or years, and if a company is consistently growing both their earnings and their dividends year on year, I am prepared to hold on to a stock forever.

I don’t really set myself any profit targets. My goal is simply to build my capital over time through trading and investing in high dividend stocks, and consistently reinvesting the dividends and profits.

Early Trading Results

I have only been trading for one week so far, but have already placed three trades in that time.

As mentioned above, I am still using a small amount of capital and haven’t fully funded my account yet, so I have been confined to using CFDs with 5x leverage, which is far more risk that I would ordinarily like to take on.

Nevertheless, the early results have been OK. I bought LLOY at 54.74 and sold the same day at 55.35, and also bought one of my favourite stocks, GVC, at 760.18 and sold at 800.78 three days later.

I also bought IMB (IMT.L on eToro) and collected the dividend on ex-dividend day, but this position is still in the red at the time of writing. However it is looking massively oversold and should hopefully move higher soon.

Follow Me on eToro

If you would like to follow my journey on eToro, simply go to the eToro website and search for SteadyProfits to view my live trading results.

I will be posting regular updates on my eToro feed, but will also be posting regular updates on this blog as well.

Whatever happens, I’m really excited to be a member of eToro because it has given me a whole new challenge, and once I have added some more funds, I will really be taking this seriously.

eToro Have Launched Their Own Crypto Wallet

November 8, 2018 by James Woolley Leave a Comment

The New eToro Cryptocurrency Wallet

There are now quite a few sites that enable you to buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but many people are still reluctant to use some of these sites due to security and trust issues.

So with that in mind, you may be interested to know that eToro, one of the largest social trading platforms with over 10 million registered users, have just launched their own crypto wallet that promises to be secure and easy to use.

Here are some of the key benefits of the eToro cryptocurrency wallet:

supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin (with more added soon)
syncs with existing eToro accounts
transfer cryptocurrency assets from eToro platform to wallet
can be used for wallet-to-wallet transfers
easy to access
no need to enter private or personal keys
multi-signature security
crypto to crypto conversion
mobile app available from Google Play and Apple app store
backed by a secure, trusted and regulated platform

eToro Wallet

Walkthrough Video

Why Do You Need A Wallet?

In case you didn’t already know, crypto wallets basically enable you to store any cryptocurrency assets that you decide to purchase safely and securely.

This is the basic functionality of a crypto wallet, but the eToro wallet has many other useful features as well, including wallet-to-wallet transfers and crypto to crypto conversions, and can be used alongside your existing eToro account.

Company Comments

Here is what the CEO of eToro, Yoni Assia, had to say about the launch of this new crypto wallet:

“We believe that crypto and the blockchain technology that underpins it will have a huge impact on global finance. Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise finance and we believe that we will see the greatest transfer of wealth ever onto the blockchain. We believe that in the future all assets will be tokenised and that crypto is just the first step on this journey. Just as eToro has opened up traditional markets for investors, we want to do the same in a tokenised world. The eToro wallet is a key part of this.”

“The eToro wallet today is just the beginning and we will be adding a whole host of additional functionality which will include supporting additional crypto and fiat tokens, crypto to crypto conversion, the ability to deposit fiat, payment in store and more.”

Rollout

The eToro wallet is currently being rolled out on a phased basis, from country to country. It will initially be used to store Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ethereum, but will eventually be available for many other cryptocurrencies as well, and as alluded to above, more functions will be available in due course.

Final Thoughts

Cryptocurrency trading and investing is of course very risky. There is a chance you could lose all of your invested capital if one of these cryptocurrencies goes under because your investment will suddenly become worthless.

However if you are looking to buy and hold Bitcoin or one of the other cryptocurrencies and are aware of these risks, you might want to make use of the new crypto wallet from eToro because this offers multi-level security, is easy to use and is backed by a fully regulated and secure trading platform that has millions of users.

Aimstrader (Jeroen Dekker) Trader Profile

October 30, 2018 by James Woolley Leave a Comment

Who is Aimstrader?

Aimstrader is a trader from the Netherlands called Jeroen Dekker who has rapidly made quite a name for himself on the eToro social trading platform throughout 2018.

At a time when many traders on eToro have struggled to make any profits, particularly after the heavy stock market falls that we have seen this month and the fall in cryptocurrency prices that have continued throughout 2018, Aimstrader has continued to generate consistent profits every month.

Markets Traded

One of the reasons why Jeroen has avoided any heavy losses and outperformed many other traders on eToro is because he doesn’t actually trade or invest in shares, and avoids trading cryptocurrencies. He is purely an index trader.

He seems to trade the German DAX 40 index the most (45.5% of his trades), but he also likes to trade the Nasdaq (22%), the Dow Jones (7.5%) and the French CAC40, and most of his trades are closed within 4 hours on average. So he could be classified as a short-term trader or day trader.

Trading Performance

Aimstrader has been trading since February 2018, and at the time of writing (30 October 2018), his results are still very impressive.

Jeroen Dekker AimsTrader Stats – eToro

As you can see from the screenshot above, he hasn’t yet had a losing month since he first started trading, and has generated a total profit of 114.05% so far, with the best month being May where he generated a profit of just over 17%.

After a superb 4-month run, the results haven’t been quite as impressive since July, but he has still managed to make some decent profits every month.

Furthermore, when you look at his overall success rate, it is hard to find fault because out of 532 trades, he has a win ratio of 87.22%.

If you look at the chart of his performance, you will see that Jeroen Dekker doesn’t seem to have periods of heavy drawdown either, like some of the traders on this platform, which is why he has a reasonable risk score of 4 right now.

Jeroen Dekker Aimstrader Performance Chart

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Trading Performance Update (December 2018)

December has been a terrible month for many of the traders and investors on eToro (including myself), and Aimstrader has also had an unusually poor month as well.

After admitting that he deviated from his usual day trading strategy at times, he is currently down 6.02% in December at the time of writing, and the reason why is because he has continued to open long positions on the major indices, which haven”t always reversed as the markets have continued to fall sharply.

As a result of this poor performance, Aimstrader has lost 10% of his copiers in the last 7 days alone, but overall it has still been a very profitable year for this popular trader because he is still up 111.31% this year, and I’m sure he will get things back on track in 2019.

Jeroen Dekker AimsTrader Stats – December 2018

Trading Performance Update (February 2019)

I mentioned in my previous update that Aimstrader had a bad month in December, and unfortunately his losing streak seems to have continued into 2019.

After ending December down 4.21%, he had a mediocre but generally acceptable January with a loss of 1.32%, but it is February that has resulted in big losses for many copiers, and encouraged many people to stop actively copying him.

That’s because at the time of writing (22 February 2019) he is currently down 6.24% for the month after some disastrous trades on the CAC40.

Aimstrader attempted to call a possible reversal on the CAC40 with a series of five short positions, but he was forced to close them all out for losses of between 22.33% and 42.98% as the markets just kept on going up.

Subsequently, he is now down approximately 11.73% in the last three months alone, which has resulted in many copiers incurring some heavy losses because he attracted many new copiers during this time.

Aimstrader Performance Stats - February 2019

Trading Strategy

As mentioned above, Aimstrader is very much a short-term trader because each trade lasts around 4 hours on average, and he tends to place an average of 14-15 trades per week.

Although he doesn’t reveal any details about his trading strategy, he points out in his profile that he has years of experience as a trader and aims to make a profit of at least 50% per year, with consistent profits every week and every month.

He also says that his trading method is based on a combination of fundamental and technical analysis, and although he may sometimes place several trades per day, he doesn’t necessarily trade every day if there are no decent trading opportunities.

Copiers

Jeroen Dekker, aka Aimstrader, is still one of the most popular traders to follow on eToro, with 24,906 followers and 4078 people actively copying his signals, with over $5m invested in him.

Final Thoughts

Aimstrader is a standout trader right now at a time when many of the leading traders on eToro have lost money, but he has only been trading for about a year.

So we will have to wait and see if he can continue to deliver equally good results in the months and years to come.

If you would like to keep an eye on this trader, you might want to bookmark this page or follow him on eToro, and if you are confident in his abilities, you can of course choose to invest money with this trader, but please read the disclaimer below before doing so.