My Social Trading Dream : Chapter 3 : eToro Bonuses

Ok, so as you know from the previous chapter I’ve been watching a number of eToro traders over the past couple of months and have added them to my watchlist.

Up until now I’ve been using my Virtual Portfolio to invest and was just about breaking even overall. This isn’t too bad to be honest, because I’d invested $1000 of fake money in each of 20 different eToro traders, some of whom were a lot higher risk than I would usually invest in.

So, this month I finally took the plunge and decided to make my investment. eToro do a great offer of giving you a really large bonus on your deposit, which varies depending on the amount you invest.

If you invest:

$300 – $999 they will give you $100
$1,000 to $2,499 they give you $300
$2500 and over and they give you $1,000 bonus

This is given in eToro points. Basically the eToro points means that you can use this money to invest in other traders, however, you will not be able to withdraw it all until you have made a certain number of trades, over a certain value. Basically, with each trade you make, you chip off of the total.

I’m not 100% sure how long it will take for this to be knocked down, but I’m in this for the medium to long term so figured I will be ok.

Originally I only wanted to invest $200 in 5 to 10 investors, however, the more I looked at this offer the more I was tempted by the $1,000 bonus and in the end I was suckered in investing $2,5000, which meant immediately my account was credited with a total of $3,5000 to invest in eToro traders.

How Did I Choose Traders to Invest in?

Well, I explained most of the process I went through in my blog post http://www.mylifestyledream.com/best-eToro-traders I wrote on choosing the best eToro traders and featured in this video:

I used these same techniques and then simply sent messages out to a number of the traders on my shortlist to see how responsive they were and getting a feel for whether they thought it was a good time to invest…. Of course all of them said it was, because they get a commission if I start following them!!!

So, the burning question on all of your lips is “Who did I invest in?”

Which Traders did I Invest in?

I decided to invest an initial sum of $350 in each of the traders below, keeping my Stop Loss at 70% and for most of the traders I didn’t copy their open trades.

The reasons I chose each of these were:

Sameerah786 – Seems like a consistent performer and has a good overall knowledge
Dimitirios1 – I like his investment style of only jumping in when he sees an opportunity
AnnaSerafini – Solid performance in the pasty and comes with good recommendations
Doew85 – Hard to resist with the consistent returns he is making
NoasNoas – Has a lot of experience and a lot of followers
HugoOchoa – Has had a bad few months but am confident he will pick up and balance this out
Misterg23 – Has had a really bad start to the year, but seems to be very knowledgeable and is a social trading expert

This leaves me with about $1,050 left to invest, so I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for some more potential investors. Am also tempted to take a punt on the markets myself, especially as the stock market is so beaten, however, I want this to be an experiment in Social Trading rather than my own investments.