Robert Francis - Social Trading and $0 Brokerage
Robert Francis - Social Trading and $0 Brokerage
Robert Francis is the Managing Director of eToro Australia - a zero commission social trading platform that allows you to learn by copying the platform's leading traders.
eToro is on the cutting edge of wealth management and investment products for investors. There are over 13 million active users worlwide. Prior to joining eToro Robert accumulated over twenty years’ experience working in financial markets in areas as diverse as option markets and foreign exchange.
We discussed:
- Tips for investors starting out
- Finding investments in everyday life
- How to use the demo account
- Protecting investors from themselves
- Follow and copy Trading
- The Editor’s Choice Investors/Traders
Tips for Investors starting out
When starting out one of the key tenets for investors to remember is; only invest what you are willing to lose. If you can’t afford to do this then you may have to review your risk profile. Preservation of capital can be one of the most important criteria for an investor, but this will impact your risk profile and the returns which you are able to generate.
How to use the demo account
eToro provides members with a demo account and ‘play money’ to help new users get a feel for the site. Robert recommends using the play money to learn how your account works without the risk of having to put money in to test out features, but don’t use the demo account to learn how to trade. Play money works well for learning how to interact with your account, but is not useful for learning how to trade, trading involves managing your risk and with no risk attached to play money this may distort an investors risk profile into the future.
Follow and copy Trading
eToro allows users to follow and copy other investors/traders. Each user has a profile with four pages which can be viewed by other members
- Newsfeed
- : Detailing all the interactions which they have with other traders within the eToro social network.
- Stats
- : Is considered by Robert to be the single most important page, will show information on the persons performance; how often they make money, what they like to trade, which trades are more successful, and drawdown rate (this is the amount of loss an investor will allow before cutting their position), and how long they have been in the market.
- Current Investments
: Gives a breakdown of what assets they are invested in, as eToro is a multi-asset platform.
- Performance over time
: Both annualised and since inception of account.
You can find a more detailed review about eToro from our friends at FINDER right here
This post was incredibly well-researched and written by Hayden Toohey. Hayden's a student at UTS and an intern at the Australian Shareholders' Association. I predict that he will be running the Reserve Bank within a couple of years. Here's a link to his LinkedIn profile if you'd like to get him before the Reserve Bank does.
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