Etoro are not only a scam they are simply criminal

Broker Discussion
40

Wow, guys i have seen some great conversation here.

I am from the UK but i live in France now.

Sorry i have just seen these comments, i think either i am not set to receive email notifications or perhaps they are going in to my spam folder?

Regarding the trade that changed into another trade.

At the time i was not really thinking about gathering evidence. I am still to go through all of my screen shots carefully. I wish i had videoed everything.

I am also guilty of “overtrading” and with my portfolio full of trades from people i had tried to copy it becomes a long process to find all of the relevant trades and then to match up screen shots with my complaints.
I am certain i have no screen shot showing the aforementioned trade in my portfolio.
I can remember though, that it was a crypto that soared shortly after it vanished from it’s position in my PF. Then i noticed i had more trades open in another crypto asset than i had originally opened in that particular crypto asset.
I think there was an excuse from eToro in the end that not all orders could have liquidity found for them. Yes. They actually got back to me. But that doesn’t explain the additional trade that appeared in the other class but how can i prove that.
The thing is, the trade was showing as active in my PF.
I know the time of the complaint and i started to look for my screen shots the other day but i got tired of searching screen shots while the stock market was wiping out a good deal of my balance. I really don’t think i have any evidence but need to look again to be sure. I have been so tired lately since getting into trading, if i’m not trading i’m researching theory or checking the news and markets.
At the time i had made way too many crypto trades, i really didn’t have a clue what i was doing back then.
However i do have other evidence, well it is evidence as i see it but how can you use something as evidence when they write a disclaimer that states that the website might see problems through 2018.
Guys, is it really acceptable that any website bugs on a regular basis these days? Let alone one that should be as secure as a bank, one that boasts 5 million users and years of experience? Really?
Well, what can i say? I have the shots that shows scrambled charts with missing chunks and screen shots of other users comments complaining about the same thing.
I have the shots of the ghosting candles.
Shots of the P&L slipping in the wrong direction.
Many many shots of error pages and technical difficulty pages when i was getting no response from the site. The other day it actually continued to work on my mobile but wouldn’t work on the laptop despite trying everything (the usual clean out and restart BS). For several hours i was left with only mobile device connectivity even though my laptop was working fine with all other websites.
Another thing i noticed was that i have been closing 100X scalp trades well into the green but they still show as a loss in my history. I needed to clear by around $12 roughly, in order to see any profit at all. I think i’m over scalping, i am not that great at it anyway.
I have a few conspiracy theories on the whole copy trader thing but that is a debate in itself that could go on for a long while!

I do not go around complaining about websites. Why would I when all other websites i use seem to work flawlessly. All i know is that this one has wound me up something chronic. It is not just because i have lost money, i am not saying that i wouldn’t have lost money but i see now how important it is to remain focused, stay clear headed and to be patient.

My experiences with eToro left me angry, what ensued was panic and disappointment. I would say that these bad experiences were reflected in my trades (not a good thing). It defiantly was not helping things when i was feeling anger, frustration and disappointment with their website.

I have also found much older testimonials online which mention some of the above points. Even on their old platform. I believe the main list of my bad experiences was listed in my original rant. But i’m not going to go over everything agin. This is already becoming long and i am tired right now.
Sorry for any bad punctuation and or spelling mistkes. I’m sure there are a few in here :wink:

41

How embarrassing!
I believe this is when i was excited about joining the site and they were offering $25 for anyone i could sign up (up to 10 people). Sounded like a good idea at the time because i thought they were great, i almost talked my girlfriend into putting the extra money we have to start building a house with into their advertised investment copy funds program. I think they had asked for a testimonial. To be honest i can’t remember now why i left the above comment but i think the $25 sign up link had something to do with it.
Another thing i have realised is that there are so many eToro videos on youtube that it is difficult to find the ones that show opinions from the other side. Youtube seems to be flooded with their videos, so either a great marketing strategy or a good way to cover up any videos which criticise the platform.
Thats just a theory, take it as you like.

42

Great reply. I really felt like my discussion missed the real world examples but i was too lazy to spend much more time on it. I think i got the idea across. You came up with some interesting examples there.
I would love to find a broker i can trust, both to stay in business and give good rates and a decent service.
Since discovering the financial world is flooded with sharks it can become difficult to know who to trust. I guess i will find the answer through friends of friends. I have some friends who have been trading 25+ years in London and some of then have gone independent now. I know i can trust them so this is where i feel my next step in the search for a broker will be.
I am still active with eToro for now. They actually blocked me from commenting now since i was ranting again and sticking up for some other members. I might have shown quite a lot of disappointment with Annie Toro who is someone that people turn to for answers. The answers are often fairly useless and usually she just provides links to pages from the site map or she often simply tells people to open a customer complaint ticket.
I am certain there are many other staff members posing as clients or perhaps they also have their own portfolios. There are certainly some very loyal followers on there! Opinions can become very strong from their side! It got me thinking that these people were operating on behalf of eToro. There certainly seems to be people flagging a great deal of the posts that complain about the site. Anyone can flag a post as spam though.
I also wondered if there were people who never experience the same problems i do? Perhaps Gold or Platinum members? Perhaps it happens after you exceed a certain amount of trades or when you day trade at certain position sizes or only when using higher levels of leverage. High volume or volatility always seems to have something to do with it.
I can’t really say, all i know is that i have never had such a bad experience with a service or website and that i also have a decent amount of screen shots showing other people complaining about these issues.
I don’t believe an investor would have many issues with the site as they are not spending a great deal of time day trading opening and closing trades manually all of the time. A long term investor would open the trade or an order and just HODL.
I should have stuck with this strategy myself. I am extremely guilty of overtrading and i know i have made eToro a large amount of money. Even when i was loosing money.
Sometimes i wonder if they trade off of the back of our trades doing the opposite of the customer but with better stop losses, knowing that most new traders will make the wrong decisions.
I was a bit suspicious that the broker could manipulate the market sometimes in order to hunt your stops as they would know where they are. IF(?) your trades are not actually placed in the market there is nothing to stop a whale from manipulating the real market to hunt your stops if it was a profitable move to them.
I really don’t know if brokers do this but i suppose anything is possible.
I don’t usually use tight stops but the other day i had been shorting platinum and things were quiet.
I decided to buy where i thought there would be quite a bit of support. Turned out i was bang on but then i saw the first fairly deep wick in a long while. It was an instant knockout for my new position and i refrained from opening it again (my bad). The thing is, i usually expect such things to happen so i’m not mad but i have never seen a wick form so quickly. I doubt i could have dodged a slower forming wick at that point in time anyway.
I know i don’t have a great deal of experience but usually you see candle movement before a wick appears. I was in the 1 Min view for accuracy and the wick just appeared with no candle stretching at all, i was looking right at it. I’m not blaming this on eToro but they have got me a little paranoid after my other experiences.
I know this is the whole thing with stop hunting and i half expected it, just not at light speed, that was a first, i have seen candles pump but this one was an instantaneous wick!
Just too tight an SL i guess.
So some of the above points are not really things i can complain about, more just an observation and an open discussion on market manipulation.

I hope some of the babypips members were doing well out there last week. I was not prepared personally and made the stupid decision to try to HODL some buy positions in some indices not realising how deep they would go.
It’s that easy to mess up guys! Certainly a lesson that will teach anyone to either actually buy the shares rather than trade them or to get out fast when things go the wrong way.
Stick to the plan!
Hoping to make some of my balance back in the week with my measly leftovers !
Wondering how deep this can go and how much sideways movement we will see.

1 Like
43

that’s fine mate, there are no arguments here between me and you , say what you want … all good.

thank you, Fair enough, consider it brought to my attention.
let’s chalk it up to a misunderstanding, since Misunderstandings happen very commonly in the world.
i will also consider your point in the future
it’s ok mate… i’m not offended, don’t worry.
and i don’t attack people , whether it seems that way or not.

Not even close. :stuck_out_tongue:

what do you mean… Personally or Trading.
if Trading, it’s Been ok, i got taken of guard initially by that stock market crash and it affected my US2000, i took around an 80 pips loss, but it’s ok, since then i have recovered, so… no biggie, it happens

Personal life, the wife is having health issues so it’s been a bit of tough week having to look after her, but it’ll be ok
so all in all, i’m ok

yes you do mate
hey… have yo contacted that lawyer yet ? that i told you do .

be cool

44

I’m overdrawn in my bank. My only option is to go to the FCA myself. I really don’t know what chance i have of getting anywhere. I have no motivation right now. I feel so burned out right now.

45

how much did you lose?

46

Luckily not a large amount because i live on a low budget. It was not a huge amount. Just the savings that i had managed to put away in my bank after bills and spending from the last ten years or so. It was only $2600. I traded for 7 weeks and have made a huge amount of trades but not so many big winners. I made some stupid mistakes like the 3 times i fell asleep while trading 1/3 of the account with high leverage.
There was the time i thought i was trading a few good gapers but i ended up getting sucked into the “correction” on 3 trades. That was almost $2000 lost by the time i ditched my apple stocks which i probably should have kept but i didn’t know they would pop back so quickly or that the adjustment would at least loose pace (for now at least). Looks like a sideways trend starting in the stock market (ie. the S&P etc).
I even got into a bit of a depression and virtually started throwing money away at one point.
They say you should detach your self from money and any emotions attached to it but that was just crazy. You also should get sleep and perspective.
My two main problems has been not being able to ditch loosing trades fast enough. But i have done some very long HODLs which have come back around so sometimes it is worth opening up those stops to their widest limit but it’s not worth the risk for the times you just can’t reach that far because after that you are wiped out (if you don’t have the margin).
I know i can do ok because i have pages and pages where 90% of my history is in the green but not many big winners so i can’t look at it as 90% profit by any means. Now i have lost most of it it feels difficult to do anything with the little that is left. Also it’s all in right now and stuck in a bit of a HODL :smiley:
Hopefully some of those will come good.
Anyway i didn’t really feel like talking much about the problems i had with the site, i need a break from this as it’s starting to piss me off.
When you can’t close trades and you just get the error message and you see the losses growing or when there is decent profit to close on but you just can’t close it is more than frustrating.
When the charts are bugging it is very annoying and all of the TA you have done becomes useless. You might as well shut the computer or go to another site to read the charts but i don’t have one setup where i can draw the TA on the charts.
Then when customer service dodge all of your questions or they close your ticket and you have not got an answer.
And when i scalp a load of trades pre market when i see price action pumping all night, all these i closed in green but one, yet they show as losses in my history. think it was around 8 shorts, average around $6 profit in the green but they are all showing as losses. Not a lot of money but it adds up, or takes away, more to the point.
Just the fact that when the site bugs is usually a time when volume, and price are really moving just doesn’t seem right to me.
Seems like they don’t want you to succeed.
I have a tonne of screen shots of other members complaining about the same things.
The copy trader thing was funny. I quickly rounded up a bunch of very successful looking high risk traders, many of them have impressive looking portfolios but i noticed they were all selling some cryptos during the time all cryptos were dumping. Wouldn’t a smart investor sell here? I copied all of this selection of “people” into my virtual account to do a little experiment. I allocated all of them $1000 of virtual money and all but one guy have been in the red ever since. Even i could do heaps better then any of those “fake traders accounts” They are obviously designed to make you lose money.
Another reason i am suspicious that eToro don’t actually place your trade in the market but they know exactly how to best invest your money for a profit, they are pros after all (well some of them are, obviously).
Perhaps silver and gold members get treated differently?
The list go’s on but once again i am getting tired.
I remember one of the first tickets i opened was because the guide had opened me a trade with real money. I think this was the first time i became angry at eToro.
They say to use the virtual account when using the guide which is fine, so why not only have it in the virtual account? The problem was that the guide was bugging and i could not complete the steps. I tried a few times and eventually switched back to “real view” Somehow i ended up making a real trade that i was not interested in. I would have not thought it possible that the guide would open an “open trade” window that could actually place a real order :smiley:
The time that i was trying to transfer another $250 from my credit card was a good one.
It told me the transaction could not be completed so i tried several times, over and over. Well guess what. I ended up emptying my bank account into my trading account. I think i had transferred the same amount 3 or 4 times instead of one. I opened a ticket for that but i think i decided in the end that it was ok, i would just trade larger sizes. Hmmmmmmm…
At the time, I wrote to them about it in a ticket immediately after the seemingly failed transactions as the money had gone from my bank.
Later i saw all of the money had actually appeared so i went all in and opened trades with everything.
Then a crazy thing happened. An EXTRA amount appeared in my available balance. I got cheeky and decided to open a trade with it. Then i noticed that my available balance suddenly changed into a negative value for that amount. I actually saw this happen in front of my eyes while i was looking at my PF.
Worried that i would get in trouble for placing a trade with money that was not mine and not knowing if there might be a consequence to having a negative balance i immediately closed a trade out to get rid of this negative value. I don’t like being in debt!
I didn’t do anything about this although i obviously lost out on the spread there. However i thought that customer service must have read my email/ticket and decided to manually adjust my account without talking to me beforehand.
Did i mention the time i left my phone number with CS and i started to get drop calls from Tunisia?
Freaky!
Anyway, enough of the stories. I’m just a bit gutted i’m out of available balance and caught up in a load of HODL. I was hoping to make some cash back on the stock bounce.
I think the biggest stress for me trading right now is the psychological component. I need to remain calm and keep my emotions in a relaxed yet aware state. I need to trust myself and the patterns more often and i need to cut losses fast.
Unfortunately my experiences over the last two months have left me far from the above.
My life is suffering in many areas right now, including health and family situation.
Not to mention this has turned into a bit of an addiction. It’s time to get out of this depression, get healthy and fit and spend more time doing family stuff. I was just hoping to win back some losses.
Typical. During the time it took me to write this message i closed a Dash short at a small loss to start to short ETC (i missed a small profit but i think there is more profit to come by the morning).
Now DASH has dropped a level so i would have made a small profit if i had not closed it.
I told myself i would not trade in Cryptos any more but decided that due to their 24hr timeframe that i might try to short them a bit. Perhaps getting a bit risky but i suppose they still have to go a bit lower over the next few weeks.
The problem is that i could not get to that money today as i was waiting for a few positions to hit the green. I was up for a while but expected more profit. Hopefully it’s coming now!
Right that was a long one in the end. Hopefully i will find a few good trades in the week. I have done ok with some stocks, commodities, FX, a bit of everything i guess.
Happy trading.

47

you know. everyone on this internet site will tell you the exact opposite of what i will tell you now.

you should give up the idea of trading for now. not because i think you are not capable of it or anything but by reading your text it is clearly visible that you are placing a lot of dreams/desires/wishes into the field of trading. you said stressed familiy situation, lack of money etc. trading will not solve this for you, not in the short run and not in the long run.

right now you are sitting home when you can find the time and read books and stuff that is supposed to make you a sucessfull trader. you are putting a lot of time into this, valuable time (and money as well) which cna be put into something else, something which might help you to get out of your situation quicker and in a more reliable way.

you can not start a new adventure/travel before you cleaned out your fridge of frozen stuff that should not unfreze. your life situation might not be the best to start something this new and something this far away from your original occupancy.

in trading/investing you cant generate any sicnificant gain/profits without already having a nice sumof money to back you up, and you can not focus your mind if you dont come from a clean background (without issues in family or money issue).

you know, sometimes the smartest way to not lose a game is by simply not playing the game. (im not implying or saying you are a loser in the trading field or anything, its just a saying)

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48

MrDE This is great advice. I am defiantly taking a break. Although i am not sure if i will quit trading altogether after putting this much work in.
Things had gone quite well at times but i made some huge mistakes, got messed around with and i feel i was a bit unlucky/greedy with the stock correction. I was expecting it to happen and i had not even had the chance to pick up many returns from stocks before i found myself trapped and pouring more money down the drain whilst trying to extend stops. I should have ditched the trades and written off the losses early.
Some time off to reflect and to educate myself some more should help me come back into the game with a much stronger position. Once i can decide on a broker that i can trust and that won’t mess me around i will feel much better about my situation. I will paper trade for a period, i feel i can improve a great deal on where i had gotten to already.
Every day i pick up new tips and learn something new.
Sorry if this means i will be bringing more competition into the market :smiley:
It will defiantly become more and more difficult to take advantage of me as i become stronger than others less experienced than me. I guess it’s not easy to beat the pros and the bots but i hope to win back what i lost and then some.
But for now i’m having a rest.
Thanks for the great advice. I really appreciate it.
How long have you been trading and how did you find the whole journey?

1 Like
49

since 8 years. Let me put it this way, it is not possible to beat the pros. thats an idea you can immediately throw out of your head.

I have a MBA in economics and im reading daily new stuff since 9 years. you never stop learning. the market makers try to sell you the idea that you can get a year or two of some light basic introduction into the field and you can already quit your job and live happy ever after without worries in your life. its fallacy.

especially if you do not come from a economic background it can take you easily 10 years of extremely hard focused learning to get a grasp on how to and how to really earn money in this field, if you ever manage to. but nobody will ever tell you that, becasue if they told you this they could not make money on your savings. simple truth, im sorry mate.

take a few days off, do not watch any charts and news. and you will see how fast your thinking changes and your mind becomes easier, then in this brake (complete shut out of any charts, no demo trading, no news, no nothing, no babypips either) you will see your own mistkaes and your mind will process the quick action you went through. if you dont take a full break of few days your mind cant ease and a uneased mind doesnt perfom the way it should…

1 Like
50

Well MrDE i’m glad your still going after 8 years. You must be doing something right. Ironically enough i have worked several times for JP Morgan but as a DJ for a Swiss staff party and as crew setting up for a couple of their christmas parties.
I am usually unaware of who the clients are at the time of the booking when going through a middle man which i had done for those bookings. So at least i got some money back out of them :smiley:
I’m currently in Liverpool UK to help a friend build a set for some other corporate gig. Not huge $$ but it helps.
I have been watching some of Ross’s videos (Warrior Trading) he has had some amazing turn arounds. He seems so genuine.
I’m happy for him if it is truly genuine. Seems that most well known traders spend more time selling stuff, such as lessons, books, videos than they do trading. Ross appears to do both but who knows. Perhaps he is just promoting the broker and the software but he does seem very genuine. I’m not expecting to get anywhere near the successes that such traders appear to be having but it would be nice to at least average a break even for a while. Hopefully more.
It’s been amazing what i have learned and crazy to look back on the mistakes i have made.
After this break we will see. I could do with some decent tools and a squawk box. It’s quite fun trying to work out what the news means and if it is old news or still relevant. I have always been a bit anti news, but at least this makes the news a bit more interesting, in a way.
Do you have any good stories or discussions posted here? It might be nice to read some posts if you have any interesting links. Not to take up all of your time or anything.
Right this post is getting a bit sidetracked. Sorry guys.
Ps. I have been using investng.com for news and reports but sometimes i just wonder who they are linked in with.

51

How long had you been trading with them before you realised that it was a fraud, putting it mildly? anyway, even this broker must have a regulator you can apply to with such a question, mustn’t he?

52

Hi Mike.
Well it is difficult to know at what point you come to realise this. I would say at the point that you feel you are getting ripped off or ignored.
Customer service like to close tickets if they think they gave you one decent answer for just about anything they feel like telling you about.
Whenever i ask or even accuse them of not having a suitable stable platform and or not trying to inform people that it might not be in their interest to be using the platform as it’s instability and unreliability will cause some people to loose more money than they should by statistic. They usually avoid answering this but once i was told that if i disable 3rd party add blockers that this might help.
I only use safari’s “block pop up windows”. Perhaps this has something to do with it? Why should it take me 2 months with several painful experiences to even learn this? And now, do i disable this feature which may effect my experience in other web browsing scenarios?
Anyway i am not entirely convinced that this one feature has caused all of the listed problems.
Here is the thing. I would like to take them to the regulator, or apply for compensation, i’m not sure how it works exactly but i believe you must pursue unresolved tickets with customer care for at least 8 weeks.
But etoro are asking me to provide the position ID’s for any trades effected. Well it is difficult for me to prove where i would have been closing out my losses or taking my profits if i had been able to.
Even then it is difficult to find which positions those were exactly. There is a great deal of history to go through.
One case in particular would be difficult to provide evidence for.
When I had a crypto asset trade open and just before it soared my crypto asset changed into a different crypto asset class. I believe i ended up with extra LTC trades, it’s like it just changed from one to another class. So i can’t find the position ID’s for the original, and i might have to guess which of the LTC trades it was, and the time of opening the trade might not have been around the same time the bugging starts. (it’s so frustrating when you are clearly still logged in and everything works as it is supposed to but you are unable to close/open or edit trades. You can see your loss or profit moving but you can’t do anything about it. Then log in problems sometimes start.
Recently i found firefox to prove more reliable, but to be honest i have barely used the platform recently, i have a bit of money still in there but i’m hoping to win a few more trades at some point. I’m having a break from trading right now. Eventually i will find a different broker and i am considering joining a small trading office.
But yes if i can find some relevant position ID’s and if i can tell them i don’t want $25 for compensation then i can eventually take it to the next stage. From what i have seen they force $25 compensation onto you and close the case. So i need to say that i am not interested in such a small compensation. I believe that after 8 weeks of unresolved tickets with customer care you may then take it to the regulator.
Something like that.

53

Thank you for sharing!! this post will help a many people from being scam.I personally think etoro is not a reliable flatform and even some of the trader is fake their post those people who comment saying they make $60k its fake they made it up to attract new user to deposit more money.
take this people down they are scammer!

54

Sorry for bumping, but how did this end?

If they are indeed criminal like you say I assume you had lawsuit and won it?

Can you update us on it please? Seems like easy lawsuit to win if what you are saying is true.

55

me too. I can not trade , withdraw or do anything with my account because they don’t verify for me . And when I report this issue to them , they just ignore it . Don’t get the same mistake like me :frowning:. I lost all my money because this platform . If you know how to use them please contact me .

56

I have been waiting them more than 10 days since I completed my profile, and they totally ignore me . Do you want to invest your money to the broker like that ? I paid my mistake , but you can avoid it .

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57

So you traded there for how long? Without being verified AND you were able to lose ALL your money? That sounds quite weird. Can you give more info like when you started trading there?

58

Very possible, they also use their own platforms that they can manage as they want… :grimacing:

59

any updates on this?