My investment portfolio has thus far increased by 40%! I’m not an expert on stocks, and I still wouldn’t even call myself qualified to buy individual stocks but I managed to increased my portfolio by 40% with zero effort. The actual numbers are minute, but it’s still extremely exciting for me to see how easy it is.

Etoro makes it easy because they have an exclusive patented technology that allows you to copy the actions of professional traders. Like I said earlier, I’m still not ready to start buying individual stocks, but I am however great at choosing who to follow on Etoro. My entire investing career thus far has been based on copying other people’s trades with Etoro’s social copying feature. And with a 40% increase, I would say that’s not a shabby start to my investing career.

I signed up to Etoro on May 2017 and made a total of 5 trades during these 7 months. ALL of my trades have been copy trades of other Etoro users. I’ve pretty much found good people to copy and then I just leave it. I’m not joking guys, I just did my research on finding reliable people to copy and then I don’t look at it for weeks at a time. The whole process is insanely easy. So much so, I wasn’t sure if I should write this post just incase my experience is a fluke or a one-off.

BUT, I digress.

Because, after taking a look at my trading history and stats available on my Etoro profile; I’ve concluded I’m a really safe investor. My average risk score is 3, where the highest score of risk on Etoro can be 10. My “buy it and leave it” approach has resulted in longer term trades, with an average weekly trade of 0.18. This means I hold onto my trades for a longer time before selling. All of my trades have been profitable and I have not traded on a loss at all. One of the big reasons for this is because when you copy a person on Etoro, you are almost buying a “stock”, whatever that trader does, be it open trades, sell or buy; Etoro will do the same to the designated amount of capital you placed on that trader.

What does this mean?

It means, instead of keeping tabs on massive multinational enterprises by constantly reading financial news and understanding all the lingo in these pieces of news. I am simply studying trader profiles on Etoro. I go through all their stats, which are made public for any trader you are able to copy. Once you find a trader you like, you’re basically saying you trust this trader to carry on behaving in a way that will make a profit. You are going to copy exactly what this trader does in proportionate to the amount you invested in this trader.

It’s an extremely innovative feature to investing and I can’t believe it’s taken so long for someone to come up with it. Etoro has opened the once exclusive service of having investment managers to anyone with a measly $200 usd. In fact, I will argue it’s better than the traditional investment manager because of the lower fees and the flexibility to pick and choose who to follow.

The minimum amount you need to upload to your account is $200 usd, which will let you start copying 2 traders at $100 each. This is exactly what I did to start myself off. The minimum amount to buy individual stocks is $500 usd. So obviously if you’re new to trading and want to learn how to trade, than copying is the best first step to take. If you copy great traders they will post regular updates that explain their trading actions. This has been extremely insightful and an absolute priceless opportunity to learn how to trade responsibly.

I’m not ready to start trading by myself yet, but I have learnt a lot and gained more confidence in trading with the dummy account Etoro provides every account holder. The dummy account lets you make real trades with your dummy portfolio, which then lets you learn through practice.

I haven’t added any additional capital to my portfolio since the initial $200 and now my portfolio is worth $281.28. $81.28 isn’t a lot, but these $81.28 have been by far the easiest dollars I have every earned. This wasn’t sweat capital of me creating a passive income stream from scratch. This was using money to make more money and nothing else. It’s the first time for me and it feels so liberating. A whole lot more liberating than my other passive income streams, where I had to wait whether my effort would pay off of not.

I plan to use Etoro more and more in the future, until I’ve built a sizeable portfolio that generates a sizeable passive income stream for me. This is going to take some time since I don’t have a lot of spare cash to just leave sitting around in stocks and copies, but I do think it’s time to accelerate my already fast growth by injecting more capital.

(I’m writing this post in parts over a period of time so by the time I get the screenshots ready, then it may be a little bit more)

When I first started, I really wasn’t sure what to expect and I kinda felt like I was going to spend $200 on mistakes and lessons. That never happened, I didn’t spend anything and I’ve learnt so much on how to pick stocks and what other traders look for in markets as well as their observations on environmental variables that can cause changes in stock prices. The ability to write posts is the only reason why I have been able to learn from other traders.

Most professional traders will write quick short updates about their trading strategy on a regular basis. Updates from traders you copy will automatically show up on your feed, but you don’t have to copy a trader to see their updates or posts. You can add them to your watchlist and simply click into their profile to read and learn. You can even ask them questions and reply to their updates. Etoro will also send updates on individual stocks to your feed if there’s been eye catching changes.

Not only am I getting lower fees and enjoying the benefit of professional traders, I’m also learning for free.

You might be wondering, why do these professional traders bother writing these updates A.K.A teach others? They’re not doing it for free. Obviously, they’re trading with their own money, but more interestingly Etoro has a popular investor program. Traders that open themselves to being copied can get compensated if they reach certain levels. I don’t know the full details of this since I’m not a part of it and don’t think I will be for a long time coming. However, I know traders who have many copiers and a large total sum of capital being copied get paid handsomely as fund mangers with other perks included. So it makes sense for them to be invested in updating their copiers what they are doing. It keeps their existing copiers happy and also brings in potential copiers by showing off their knowledge.

If you have money to spare you’re not in a hurry to use, then do yourself a favour and signup to Etoro and start learning. And if you just so happen to be the rare unicorn that’s rather knowledgable in investing already, then sign up and join the popular investor program to earn an additional stream of income! (Also please link me to your profile, as I’ll love to check your stats and copy you)

Keep an eye out on my next Etoro post. I’ll be writing another post sometime soon on how to choose reliable traders to copy, since not all traders get results. I’ll show you all the steps I go through and explain every part of the process so you can start looking for your own traders that suit your investing needs. You can signup to my Winnie MD newsletter and I’ll let you know once it’s up.

If you’ll like to signup to Etoro right now before my next post, then click on the link below and you’ll get an extra $20 on your initial deposit.

Etoro

Leave a comment below if you have any questions or share it with anyone you know that might benefit from this post.

Other resources you should check out:

• Learn how to pick the perfect trader to copy on Etoro 
• The 3 rules to money that’ll help you build wealth and retire early
• Top 3 places to buy low risk investment properties
• My retirement plan in detail