The stock market was once exclusive to financial experts and high-level executives. Now, more people than ever have access to buying and selling stocks. With platforms like eToro, anyone can become a trader of stocks.
Some people may think it is too easy to simply access the eToro trading platform and start trading CFDs, stock, cryptocurrencies, and more, but that is what social investing is all about. With platforms like eToro, anyone can become a stock trader.
Social investing platforms like eToro make this possible. For people who are still wary of using them, we will be answering the question of whether you can really buy stocks using the eToro platform. We will also be explaining other things you can do with the platform.
Buying and selling stocks, trading in currencies and foreign exchange, crypto exchange, and more are all possible with eToro. Read this article to see our eToro review and learn about how you can buy stocks and more using this platform.
Our article is not aimed at giving investment advice or any other form of financial advice. Rather, we are simply reviewing the platform and explaining the ways it can be used to access the stock market, buy stocks, and many more.
What is eToro?
eToro is a social trading platform that helps people with their investments. That is a broad description of who eToro is from eToro themselves. To give more details, eToro is a social trading platform that combines elements of social media with finance to make the stock exchange more accessible.
eToro is essentially a social media platform for trading stocks and carrying out other financial services. The platform was launched in 2007 as an Israeli company and is now one of the largest investment networks globally.
The eToro platform boasts up to 20 million users communicating and trading on its servers, and provides safe and secure trading for both beginners and experts. Its unique features make it stand out among other trading platforms.
The standout feature of eToro is the CopyTrader feature, which allows users to see each other’s trading history and copy their patterns. With eToro, you can monitor successful traders and see their past performance in trading.
Many online brokers and newcomers to trading alike have successfully used the platform to launch trading careers. eToro users can communicate with other traders, practice different trading strategies, and trade stocks safely.
Creating an eToro account
Joining eToro is a straightforward process. It doesn’t take too much time and does not require large amounts of paperwork. You don’t need to have extensive knowledge or experience with trading to create an account.
When you click on the ‘create an account’ button, the first thing you will have to do is fill out some personal information. This includes your full name, country of origin, address, phone number, and date of birth.
When you enter your phone number, eToro will send a unique code to your phone which you will use to complete your registration. eToro is available globally, but only in select locations so you will have to check first if it is available where you live.
Once the first stage of registration is complete, you will have to pass through the Know Your Customer process. This process is compulsory for all stockbrokers to verify the identities of the people using the platform.
In this process, you will need to provide documentation that proves your identity. This could include a passport, a state-issued ID card, or a driver’s license. The mode of identification you use must be valid at the time of registration.
You will also need to upload documents that prove the validity of your residential address. These include a bank or credit card statement, a tax bill, or a utility bill from a water, electricity, or gas company that states your address.
With your identity verified, the next step in setting up your account is to make your first deposit. The minimum amount that can be deposited into your account is 10 US dollars. You can deposit it in other currencies and it will be converted to USD.
eToro supports all multiple payment methods such as bank transfers, credit or debit cards, online banking, rapid transfer, skrill, and many more. With eToro, there are no deposit or withdrawal fees no matter what payment method you employ.
When you have made your deposit, your eToro account is complete, and you can start interacting with stock exchanges and trading yourself!
How to use the eToro platform
Below, we will be explaining the main sectors of the eToro platform and the functions that they all bear. You will need to understand these before you can start using the platform.
Watchlist
The watchlist allows you to organize the markets and retail investor accounts you are interested in. You can add people to this list to keep an eye on them and even create lists based on why you are interested in the people on the list.
Portfolio
This is the center of your investing activities. Your portfolio shows you all your open trades, current values, investments, underlying asset, and more. You can monitor your performance and control all your operations from the portfolio.
News feed
When you follow traders, their activities are displayed on your news feed. This is the part of eToro that is most similar to social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. The news feed lets you know what your favorite traders are doing and saying.
Trade markets
Here, you can research different markets and trade in them at your discretion. The markets available on eToro include stocks in multiple companies, currencies for foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and commodities like gold and indices.
Copy people
With the copy people function, you can search through other traders on the platform and copy their trade activities to yield similar results as them. You can use this automated system to take trades at the same buy and sell price as professional traders. Copying is arguably far better than seeking investment advice, in some cases.
How to buy and sell stocks on eToro
With eToro, you can both buy and sell stocks on the market and interact with different investors as they carry out their trading activities. Once you have funds in your account, you are good to go with trading.
Buying stocks
The first step to buying stocks on eToro is searching for what stocks you want to buy. To do this, you have to search for the company you want to buy stock from. You can search for all kinds of companies.
eToro lets you trade stocks from major companies such as Apple, Samsung, Tesla, Zoom, AT&T, Upstart, Etsy, and many more. When you want to search, you can go straight to the search bar or browse the available options such as tech stocks or popular stocks.
The ‘discover’ function helps if you don’t have an idea of what company’s stocks you want to buy. You can also use filters to search for companies in specific niches and sectors, such as software, retail, consumer goods, and more.
When you have chosen a company, eToro provides highly comprehensive market data on the stock of your choice. This is very helpful if you want to research the financial markets to determine whether you want to invest or not.
Stick trading is made easy on eToro. To buy stock, all you have to do is place a buy order. You do this by clicking on the ‘trade’ button on whatever stock you want to buy. You can then include how much you want to stake and click on ‘open trade’.
eToro will immediately place your order if the market is open or queue it up to be executed when the markets reopen if they are closed. With that, you have successfully used the platform to buy stocks.
Do you actually buy the underlying asset on Etoro?
This depends on the type of trade. If you buy a long, non leveraged position on a stock, then you are buying the underlying stock asset on the relevant stock exchange (London stock exchange, for example). However, if you open a short position, or if you use leverage, then you are likely to be using different financial instruments. The most likely scenario is that you will be trading CFDs. Trading CFDs allows you to access products that have traditionally not been available to retail investors, as they come with added exposure and risk.
Selling stocks
Selling stocks on eToro is just as easy as buying them. As long as the markets are open, eToro users can sell their stocks whenever they want with ease. Selling stocks can be done through a user’s portfolio.
Your portfolio shows you your current investments and the assets you hold at any given time. Besides each stock you own, you will see a’settings’ option. When you click on this, a sell order box will appear which lets you sell your stocks.
The stocks get sold at the next available market price if the markets are open and the money goes straight to your wallet balance, which can be withdrawn at any time.
Other features of eToro
Besides trading stocks, many other features can be carried out using the eToro platform. The buying and selling of stocks are just the tip of the iceberg of what eToro can be used for. Here are some of the best features of the platform.
CopyTrader
The CopyTrade feature of eToro is by far the most popular feature of the platform. It is the easiest way to make investments and can be completely stress-free. Copying people lets investors piggyback on the successful investment strategy of someone else.
The copy trading function makes it so that your portfolio instantly mimics every trading action the person carries out. This includes both the buying and selling of stocks. This takes the pressure off you to research stocks to sell and lets you replicate the success of others.
The copy people function ensures that you get returns to your account that are proportional to what percentage of your funds you allocate to the person you are copying. However, it is not so straightforward to find good people to copy.
It may be tempting to simply copy the profiles of investors that are labeled as “most copied”, but this has been proven to be a bad investment move. You can lose money rapidly by being a sheep and copying the investment patterns of the most copied people.
The reason why some people who have high copies may be making bad investments is the same reason why you may be tempted to copy them in the first place. Many people on eToro are newbie investors with little experience.
When they come across a trader with small scale or rapid success, they may rush to copy that trader. Other people see that the trader is being copied, and in no time, someone who got success through a stroke of luck that cannot be replicated is left with hundreds or thousands of copies.
So, how can you find the best people to copy? The first way to do this is by filtering your searches when looking for people to copy. You can filter by location, investments, profits, and how long they have been trading.
This lets you view people who have been more consistent with their trading activities. You should also look for traders that are communicative and have considered investment advice that you can profit from.
Copying people is usually a good starting point to get into more serious trading, though you can earn a lot of money and make good investments through copying alone.
Popular Investors program
The popular investors’ program is a program created by eToro to reward users for their investment prowess. The program rewards people based on how many copies they have each month and gives a financial commission.
The program is also aimed at incentivizing traders to trade responsibly and interact with the eToro community. The better you perform on eToro, the more copies you get. At the end of the month, people with high copies get a financial commission for their work.
The key to gaining high copies and maintaining them is making consistent trades that are responsible and profitable. It also helps if you are interactive in the community and offer advice and tips to people that reach out to you.
Digital wallet
The digital wallet that eToro provides lets users store cryptocurrency on the app. The app is called eToro wallet and is available for both Android and iOS-powered devices. With the wallet, you can store cryptocurrency and convert it for withdrawal.
When converting cryptocurrency to fiat currency, eToro charges a fee of 5% of the amount. This amount seems high to many users, but it may be worth it to have a secure digital wallet that you can carry out transactions through.
Users can transfer cryptocurrency from their eToro account to their digital wallet, but the transfers only work one way. This means that currency cannot be transferred from the wallet back to your eToro account.
Crypto and forex trading
With eToro, users can also trade in cryptocurrency as well as foreign exchange. Users can convert between cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. eToro features over 30 different cryptocurrencies that can be traded.
For the trading of cryptocurrency, eToro takes 1% in trading fees per transaction. There are no transaction fees for other types of trading, such as stocks or ETF trades.
The benefits of using eToro
eToro has proven to be a great platform for trading and the stock exchange. If you are still unsure about the platform, here are some benefits of making use of it.
International trading
eToro has users in 140 countries globally and is counting. The online community includes more than 20 million active users that can vouch for the platform. eToro recently opened up its platform to users in the United States.
eToro is focused on making trading accessible for all kinds of people, which is why its network is so international. While they are not yet available in many regions, they are constantly working towards bringing their services to the places where they are not yet accessible.
Virtual trading
Virtual trading is a system that lets new investors practice trading strategies without any risk by using fake money. Virtual trading has been noted to be incredibly helpful in training young investors and introducing them to the market safely.
When a user creates an eToro account, they are rewarded with $100,000 in a virtual trading account. This way, they can practice and familiarize themselves with the landscape of the stock exchange market if they are new to it.
This feature is another standout because it encourages young traders to try out trading and allows them to do so with no risk. The usual market risk involved with trading is eliminated with virtual trading so that they can make mistakes and learn from them with no consequences.
An easy introduction to trading
All of the features of eToro are aimed at making trading accessible and easy for everyone. The concept of social investing exists to show that anyone can participate in the stock market and be successful in it.
Features like the copy people feature and the free virtual trading platform encourage new investors to stay committed and continue making moves in the investing space. eToro makes investment easy and provides a means for more people to make money from the stock market.
Conclusion
So, can you really buy stocks on eToro? The answer to this is a resounding yes and so much more. eToro is a great platform for all sorts of financial and investment services and continues to boast an ever-growing community because of this.
Using eToro introduces people to all kinds of investments and helps them understand the basics of investment while interacting with an enthusiastic community that is equally passionate about finances and investment.
eToro is a great platform for buying and selling stocks, trading cryptocurrency, investing in other assets and so much more. With eToro, investing is made easy and fun.
