eToro — Forex Broker

I have been trading with this broker for couples of months, on and off. Sometime I was happy with their services but not always. It is of course good that they did compensation when there were problems with our trades and ultimately this had caused the lost. However, it could really take a long time to resolve a problem, without any reasons. I had my account manager gave me a hand to resolve the problems most of the time. I have currently a case problem and was told not to be able to get compensation. I contacted my account manager and he however ended up to request me to close my account if I was not satisfied with etoro. I found this is kind of rude. He just did it without discussing with me. He asked me to pull out all my trades and my account will be closed within 24 hours. If he is unhappy with me, I will be more than happy to change an account manager. I was not told what has happened but just to close my account. Could anyone please tell me whether he is doing the right thing? Or the etoro is just avoiding to make me compensation?

Dear Paul,

Thank you for taking part of our investment community and for taking the time to review our platform. I’d like to address the issue you raised here about your eToro practice account. The kind of incident you described could only have happened on the weekend during historical rates mode.

Allow me to explain. During the week, when the markets are open, our demo mode operates with the same rates as our real trading platform, i.e. live market rates. However, over the weekend the markets are closed, and since we want to provide our traders with the opportunity to practice over the weekend, the demo mode switches to historical rates. When you log into the platform on the weekend, this is clearly indicated. Historical rates means that the rates you’re trading on are real rates from the past, and therefore they might not correspond to the current market rates.

If you want to avoid this rates shift in the future, I would suggest that you close your open trades when the markets close and open new trades over the weekend.

I hope this clears things up and I wish you happy trading,

Laura, eToro Team

I've been using etoro for about 2 months, now. When I have lost money, it was because of my inexperience and because of being a beginner at the forex/commodities trading game. In that time I have learnt a lot, though, and am pleased with the progress I have made.

So how does etoro stack up? Pretty well, so far. I do appreciate how etoro have gone out of their way to simplify something that is actually very complicated. Well done to them, on that score. But, as a direct consequence of their success in simplifying things, they do attract beginners, such as myself, and other people who don’t know the first thing about what they are getting themselves into - many of the complaints I see here seem to be from people who don't know what they are doing and are looking for someone to blame.

I do not only have good things to say about etoro, however. While the “REAL” trading account I have with them has worked as it should for me, the “PRACTICE” account has some serious issues. And they are issues that give me cause for concern.

I started my practice account with them at 10,000USD (if I remember correctly). One short week later I was up to 75,000USD. Pretty good, huh? No. I had a look at my trading history and noticed that I had won huge amounts of money on four consecutive trades when etoro had said the price of the commodities I was trading had gone to ridiculously low levels and I had, as a result, made huge profits on the trade. Allow me to elaborate.

Here are the details of one of the trades (the others were similarly ridiculous):

On 21/06/2011 I opened a Silver SELL position at 36.18. I bought $1,000 worth, and leveraged it at 50X. That’s 1,000 units. Etoro automatically closed my SELL position, a day later, at a rate of 20.62 for a profit of $15,610 and a gain of 1,561%. For anyone out there who has been watching the Silver prices for the last few months, that rate of 20.62 is clearly ridiculous. It also is absolutely false. It didn’t happen. Go and look for yourself when last Silver was priced at that level. I bet you anything that that kind of error in my favour would not happen on my REAL account. I wish it would.

So, my question is this: Why would etoro allow me to believe I had made such huge profits, within my first week of trading, with my PRACTICE account? Is it to make a silly beginner, like me and many/most of the people using etoro, believe they’re naturals and to then deposit large amounts of money and start trading for real? Looks like it to me. The other option is it was a bug. And who wants a bug messing with their real money when they’re doing real trades. Not me.

I would have uploaded a screenshot if I could have. I have the proof and it looks really dodgy to me. Anyway, an official response from etoro would be nice. That seems to happen on this review site. I’ll check back in a few days. Thanks.

Dear Glen,

There seems to be a misunderstanding because eToro definitely doesn’t charge spreads twice.

The spread is the difference between the buy and sell prices, so you don’t actually get “charged” a spread, it simply occurs because of the differences between the price at which you buy the pair and the price at which you sell it when you close the trade (or vice versa).

To take your example, if you buy a pair at 1.4445 this is the eToro buy price, there’s no difference between “eToro rate” and “user rate”. If there’s a spread of 5 pips on this particular currency pair then the sell price at the moment you bought it will be 1.4440. Now, if the price goes up by 5 pips then you’ve covered the spread, if it goes up by 10 pips to 1.4450 then you’re in the profit by 5 pips (the actual profit depends on the amount of lots you have bought).

I think your mistake is derived from assuming that we charge any kind of spread when you open the trade. The fact is that the spread is only “charged” at the end when you close the trade because it is only then that you’ve completed the buy and sell transactions and the spread is therefore realized.

If you go back and make another trade at eToro, I’m sure you’ll see that this is the case. You can also talk to our other traders through the eToro chat to confirm that this is how it works. And of course, you’re welcome to contact our support team at any time.

We wish you happy trading,

The eToro Team

Etoro is a low quality broker that is extremely greedy on its spreads. It claims to have low spreads however after you apply the hidden charges you can lose alot of money very quickly than other more professional brokers.

The way etoro's trading plaform works as a revenue generator is by applying a spread to each trade.

For example

buy 1.50 User

Buy 1.45 Etoro

Users sells at a profit of 1.55

Etoro sells at 1.55

You would have thought that the $5.00 spread that is explained at the start of the trade would be enough for etoro. But unfortunately its not they not only apply a spread at the start of the trade but also on the exit

the system works for the user buy to buy price minus sell price.

so if a user enters a trade at 1.50 and leaves at 1.55 with a $5 gain the user then has to cough up the sell charge which loses him his profits and in turn makes etoro very rich.

Its a shame that the customer service staff lie buy telling you that they only charge a spread once. However this is not the case.

Avoid Etoro and use a professional and more trustworthy broker.

Cyprus the home of money laundering!

Profiteering at its worst.

This is in response to the post by Hasiholan Gatot.

Dear Hasiholan,

After having reviewed your account, it has come to our attention that your withdrawals were suspended due to suspicion of credit card fraud. Please try to understand that as a forex service provider our company comes under constant attack from people trying to effectuate financial fraud through our processing system, so we have to take every precaution if we have the slightest suspicion. It is very possible that your transactions were perfectly legitimate but we simply did not receive enough proof to clear the matter up. The documents you sent us did not match the information on the credit cards you used to make the deposits in your eToro accounts. We also cannot withdraw your funds because they deposits were cancelled by you and reversed from our accounts. Furthermore, the chargebacks that you and your friend demanded led us to suspend your accounts and to investigate the issue with the credit card company. If you wish to resolve the issue we encourage you to contact us directly at social@etoro.com and provide us with the proof we need to reopen your accounts.

Best regards,

The eToro Team

Dear Cat,

I’m sorry to hear that you had a disappointing experience with our demo platform. I would like to investigate further to get to the bottom of the issue and fix it as fast as possible, if indeed there is a technical issue with the demo platform. I would also like to sincerely apologize that you did not receive adequate customer service, I promise to try to make it up to you if you are indeed willing to give eToro another chance. In any case I would certainly appreciate it if you can write to me at social@etoro.com, and give me the precise details of the problem you experienced.

Thank you very much and sorry again for the inconvenience you’ve encountered.

Sincerely;

The eToro Team

New to this whole thing but tried etoro's practice account with the intention of opening a real account if I liked it. The first week was fine, I started making small profits and liked the way it was set up. Second week I tried to log in again fine but then it disconnected and I have been able to log in ONCE since then and that was a few weeks ago. I emailed for assistance telling them that I was considering opening a real account but if I was experiencing issues like this in only my second week with them I was going to obviously reconsider giving them actual money and all I got in response was but were suggestions I made clear in my emails I had already tried. I have given up on etoro and I'm glad that I have after all the bad reviews I've read about them. There are plenty of brokers who's platform is simple to use and have much better reviews. If you're considering etoro I really wouldn't waste my time or my money.

etoro is a very good platform. The executions are fast, stop losses work good. I personally made three withdrawals from etoro and it was fine. It takes 5 days to get your money if you sent the documents. But i had to send the documents only the first time I made the withdrawal. For the second and third withdrawals etoro support didn't ask me for the documents.

Hi Stephane,

When using eToro platform, a stop loss is automatically set up on your trade so that if the market goes against you, it won't let you loose more than you invested to the trading position. The platform gives an opportunity to change the stop loss for a different level. You can do it upon opening the trading position or after the position is opened.

We have eToro platform guide on our site that can help you learn how to use the eToro platform. In addition you can contact our support team via email support@etoro.com or via the live chat on the site.

We want all traders to know that eToro is not a market maker. We are fully regulated and are not interested in the losses of the traders. We are using the interbank system and hedge all trading positions of our traders. We do our best to help our traders and mak Forex trading as transparent and easy as possible. As a results we have developed the ObenBook application that allows any trader to see, copy and follow our most sucessful traders and make profits.

If any trader has an issue with the eToro platform or some misunderstanding, we invite you to get in touch with us and try to solve it befor posting the camplains.

eToro has the worse platform ever. Their casino-like platform includes an options of forcing you to put a stop loss to your trade. While, it's always good to set a SL you should also know that SL must not be fixed but must be relative to the market conditions for example using the ATR indidicator as most successful traders do. Otherwise, the SL will do the same job as if you didnt have put a SL. And this is exactly this "trick" eToro uses to be sure you won't be profitable especially if you're a new trader. All brokers leave this function free to each trader but not eToro which is however is a new company. There should be a reason to this and you should know it. It's idiot to not trade with SL as it's also very idiot to leave you broker do it for you. Actually, who makes money when you lose? Your broker...I have personnally left this broker until they remove this unbiaised feature which is not for now as it's their bread and butter! Don't let you blind with their shiny trading platform as you will lose faster as you would have never think of...

sorry I'm not fluent in english

hello all I want to tell you all, my friend and I have been in stealth by eToro, profit me and my friend was not paid by eToro, eToro is apparently a big scam company.

MY NAME : HASIHOLAN

MY FRIEND NAME : OKI IWAN

and this is my experience and my friend in eToro, my friend and I deposit via credit card on 3 August 2010 (HASIHOLAN) amounted to $ 1,380 usd and my friend deposit on the date of 8 August (OKI IWAN) amounted to $ 1,303 usd, and then on the date 12 August 2010, I and my friend has a profit large enough namely 130% from capital and total my balance becomes (HASIHOLAN): $ 3,058 usd and the total balance of my friend becomes (OKI IWAN): $ 3,026 usd, and then on the 15th August 2010 , My friend (OKI IWAN): want to withdraw profit amounted to $ 1,673 usd and I (HASIHOLAN) want withdrawal my profit also on 22 August 2010 amounted to $ 1,628 usd, but eToro not send / pay profit me and my friend, and even lock the account both of us. whereas me and my friend have sent all the documents requested by eToro , such as drivers license, billing address, credit card copy. everything has been fulfilled.

then I asked for my credit card company and my friend to chargerback our deposit $ 1,380 usd & $ 1,303 usd to eToro. deposit our , back eventually also to the credit card, but our profit $ 1,673 usd & $ 1,628 usd is not paid by eToro. hhuuu ... , Really big scam company.

to all of you that wants to open a new account at eToro, please to think twice and be careful, because once your big profit , then your profit will not be paid by eToro.

please if anyone can help me, so my profit is paid by eToro.

MY USERNAME IN ETORO : HASIGATOT

EMAIL ME : hasiholangatots@yahoo.com

MY FRIEND USERNAME IN ETORO : OKIIWAN

MY FRIENDS EMAIL : okiiwanwitono@yahoo.com

eToro broker is very good. I and my brother trader on eToro platform and do competition between us. It is cool and fun.

We use eToro in Arabic because our English is not very good.

eToro is definitely not a scam, quite the opposite, it is one of the most thoroughly regulated and transparent forex services around. We find that scam accusations usually come either from traders who have misunderstood eToro’s policy or from traders who on the contrary have understood it and tried to abuse it. So in the interest of transparency and to avoid any confusion we suggest that all traders interested in eToro head to www.etoro.com and read the terms and conditions or contact our support to find out more. We have more than a million traders who are perfectly satisfied with our service. We invite you to read what they write about us in our blog: http://www.etoro.net/commentaries/trader-interviews and to read what was written about eToro in the press : http://www.etoro.com/why-etoro/in-the-news.aspx

Hi Dear Traders, I just came accross the reviews below and was shocked how most of you are mistaken. I am a professional trader and I traded with about 10 different brokers. I know eToro very well as I also have a real account there and trade with eToro from time to time.

First of all if you Marvin or someone else lost money, never blame the broker, because it was your trading decision to choose a high leverage. eToro offers the leverage from 1:25 to 1:400. And if you were looking for a fast profit using a high leverage - it is your problem.

Tip: try to use low leverage especially if you are a newbie in Forex. I recommend to use maximum 1:100.

eToro is fully regulated (otherwise I wouldn't trade with them). You can check their licenses yourself: http://www.etoro.com/trade/etoro-and-brokers.aspx

Tip: trade with fully regulated brokers

eToro has no office in UK. They have offices only in Cyprus (main), USA, Dubai and Australia. But they offer the local phone numbers for many countries, so that by calling their UK number (for example), you won't pay for an international call.

Usually eToro asks the traders to send the necessary documents. It is needed for the withdrawals and other reasons if they need to varify your account. I also sent them my docs and you can close the nuber of your credit card on the credit card scan that you send them. Just leave last 4 digits so that they can see hat this is the card you used for depositing. These may seem uncomfortable for the traders, but it is done for your account's security. They want to be sure that it is the owner of the account is changing the password not somebody else! By the way, every broker has an access to the log in details of its traders. Sad but truth.

Tip: be on the safe side by trading with the brokers who can guarantee the safity of your trading account.

Successful trading to all,

Daniel