I started social trading with eToro in July 2013, mainly by copying other traders. I chose traders with good statistics, e.g. with high profits in the past, but also traders with low risk trading or traders, which have many other copiers. But it didn’t pay off: I copied 52 different traders, with only 13 of them I made profits.
Now (in Dezember 2022), I had a deeper look at eToro’s traders and copiers and want to present you the results*1:
- eToro has 1,910,000 members available in people search (you have to play with GET parameters to see them all) [query].
- 150,000 of them are inactive (return of exactly 0% in the last 12 months) [query].
- That means 1,760,000 members are active.
- 160,000 members lost nearly all (80% and more) of their investment in the last 12 months [query]. That is 8,4%!
- 916,000 members lost at least half of their investment in the last 12 months [query]. That is 48%!!
- 97,000 members made profits in the last 12 months [query minus inactive members].
- That means 1,663,000 made losses in the last 12 months. That are 94%!!*2
Yes, the last 12 months were hard. MSCI World Index lost around 19%. But eToro members lost way more. 1,400,000 members lost 19% or more [query]. Only 500,000 performed better than MSCI [query minus inactive members]. Average return would be interesting, but I don’t think eToro will make this public.
*1 All numbers are slightly rounded
*2 eToro itself says in April 2023 „77% of retail investor accounts lose money„