In my early years, oh well, I never liked mathematics much - so you can easily imagine I am not from a financial background. I was so scared of banks and investment that what I was asked by my bank if I want to invest in low risk bonds and funds my answer was a resounding 'no'.
However, this changed about 2 years back when I was introduced to the share market by my close family members. I was obviously not happy with the paltry interest UK banks were paying for my hard earned money. So I decided to take a plunge and hey - I gained 38% in one year. It was a good year.
But, this topic is not about that investment. It is about a very different world that I entered last 4 months back. I was looking for an opportunity to buy the new asset - cryptocurrency. I opened an account in coinbase, poloniex and eToro. Coinbase and eToro seems to me the easiest option so I bought some cryptocurrency in both of them.
While buying crypto I started exploring the eToro platform and was amazed by the fact that how easy to buy or sell a share/fund compared to traditional platforms like HL. I bought some share - it went up 5% - I sold it. Wow, I made 5% gain in 2 days. I learned from reading that oil might go down. I shorted it with X5 leverage. Worst mistake for a euphoric noob - I hit stop loss in no time. To cut these sad story short - I lost 38% in my first 2 months. Only saving grace was that I started with a small amount of money so I didn't get a heart attack.
This is a very common scenario - to do trading effectively you need the time, which is a premium for most people who has another job. These trading platforms demands knowledge, ability to good technical analysis of the graph, time to review investment, keep an eye on the instruments in order to strike a good deal at the right time.
I realized that I have neither knowledge or time. I decided to go for eToro's copy traders/investor option. It is very easy to find good traders in eToro to copy. You have various parameters using which you can filter the names. The parameters are - country, market, %gain, number of copies, profitable months, drawdown, trading frequency etc.
I went for >100% gain in a year as my primary parameter (a bit over ambitious - usually expect 5-8%!) and consistency as secondary parameter. I only took the investors who are enrolled in the eToro's popular investor program (they are marked with green, blue, amber, red star) as I expected them to have gone through eToro's review process. This is possibly the best decision I made in 2017. Popular investors have dragged my profit up and I am sitting comfortably at 50% gain now after 2 months.
I think this is an important decision to make for everyone who wants to invest in a platform like eToro. How much time you have and willing to dedicate to trading. Are you able to generate a good profit for your effort? If not, why not copy those who knows the trade. It is a great passive income opportunity. You spend your quality time where it matters and let the expert bring profit to you.
Cheers!