O.K, so a big question I get asked, and it's actually, it's the first question I asked for obvious
reasons. First time I ever went to youtube on the internet I had sort of heard about
Etoro - the first thing I wanted to know is "Is this a scam?" I knew nothing about it
- "Are they going to steal my money?" I don't have a lot of money, I don't want my money
going missing... And I know that you, know, I'm a Noob and I don't know anything about
this, I'm very new to it, I don't know about trading - all I knew about trading is that
it's a really complex thing done by really shark-like people who just, you know, deal
with money and make money off people, and they wear braces and they, you know ... So
all I knew about trading is that it's complicated, it's well over my head and so I heard about
Etoro and I thought "Oh God" because I've heard stories about people losing money, you
know, I've been on facebook and there's all these kind of scam - obvious scam things...
Actually the more I'm into it now, the more I see those and think "Oh my God!" and I try
and tell them "No!!" Anyhow, so first thing I did with Etoro is I signed up and I thought
"Alright" ... I had some money at the time so I put $1000 into Etoro. I didn't even - I
did nothing with it. I validated it, I went through that whole process of you open an
account, you have to upload your I.D card or passport, and one bill, like your utilities
bill to show where you live... All of this stuff freaked me out as well, I'm like "Why
am I giving you my I.D card, what are these! - Identity theft!" or something, or you know,
it just seems very serious and a bit frightening to me, because I don't normally have to do
that, especially with a website - why would I give them my details, I don't know who they
are. Anyhow... I did it - put in my bank account details, they verified me, I put in the money
- I think I put in the money before they verified me, and I was a bit, you know, suspicious
of that as well - "They'll take my money before ..." but they verify - you can't trade before
you're verified, but you can put in money. So I put in the money, got verified, and I
did nothing with it, and the first thing I did was actually waited a bit and then I withdrew
all of that money. Now when you withdraw money, you obviously, you go to here... "Withdraw
Funds". At the moment all my funds are tied up. That's the amount of money I've got...And
so I can't actually - my withdrawable balance is 0 because all of that money is in trades.
I'm tied up to the hilt, completely in trades - it's not good for your risk score. If you
leave a little of your money not in trades just in your available balance, your available
margin, it lowers your risk score. But, at the moment, I'm doing that... so I put the amount
of money that I wanted to withdraw into there, and pressed "withdraw" - now, when you do
that, press "Submit", when you do that you get - there are fees, and you can look them
up ... I'll try and ... help, I'll go to "help" and try and find out "How to withdraw" there we go... "Are
there any withdrawal fees" Yes, so here we are, withdrawal fees... So, when yo want to
withdraw money, your own money, A. When you put in money to Etoro it converts it all into
U.S Dollars, they convert every currency you put in - mine was Euros. They convert that
into U.S dollars, but I've asked a lot of people and apparently they use an exchange,
so there is a processing fee to make that change from whatever money you're putting
in into the U.S Dollar amount. But apparently their exchange rate is extremely competitive
- you really can't beat it elsewhere, and I've asked a few people and I trust them and they've
said "No, don't worry about that. - Don't change your money into dollars and then put
it into Etoro" because they're quite fair, they're really fair on the way they do that.
When you want to withdraw money, they charge you a fee. So here, if it's between 20 and
200 dollars, they charge you 5 dollars. If it's between 200 and 500 dollars, they charge
you 10 dollars. If it's more than 500 dollars they charge you $25. So I withdrew $1000 so
I got charged $25 and I just waited and I thought "Is this money going to get back to
me?" I think I did get a sales call or something, you know... They were like "Why, why? Is everything
O.K? But I understand that, I've worked in kind of sales stuff before, and I know that
that's just really quite good practice - it's annoying - me, it annoys me - "Get away from
me, don't ask me why I want my money! Go, go go!" But I get it, they're just trying
to retain people, that's their kind of business model. But, I got my money back so it took
like maybe 2 or 3 days and I got the money back. It comes back to the account that you
credited it from. So if you credited it by this credit card, it'll come back to that
credit card, or the other one, it'll go back to that one. And I got
my money back, so when that happened, I was kind of, you know, relieved realistically.
I thought "O.K, I kind of trust them a bit more." And I trusted them to actually start
looking at trading. So what I then did is - I mean that was a big thing, I really didn't
know if they'd just take the money and run. And what I've sort of realised after that
is, I realised how big Etoro was... So it's not like a little company where it's worth
their while just to kind of steal from me and disappear with the money. So let's say
they get me in and they just start stealing from people all over the place. First place
I checked was online reviews... "Is Etoro a scam?" - that's why I'm calling this video
that, you know, just to give my experience of it. Because it's terrifying... It could
be. And I checked reviews all over the internet, you see that's when we live - we live in a
time where there are loads of reviews everywhere, so if Etoro or any company was to just start
ripping people off, I mean, if there had been like, you know, any amount of serious complaints
saying "No, don't trust them, Etoro takes you money..." If there had been any of them
I doubt I'd have signed up... The ones I did find which were a bit about "I didn't get
my money back" were just "It took 15 days to process" or "Instead of giving me all my
money back in one go, it split it into 5 separate payments, what idiots... LOL" you
know... So it wasn't - I didn't see any reviews which said they out and out took my money
which is why I even tried with the 1000, you know. But, what I've realised since is that
they're not in this to scam... They're so big - now an exchange, they make their money
off spread fees. Every trade that I make, or when I'm copying, the person I'm copying
makes, and therefore I make, they get spread fees. So let's say the real price is here.
When I buy it, they'll charge me a slightly higher price. That little difference is called
the spread fee - that's how they make their money. It happens when I buy a thing or when
I open a "Sell" position - they'll make their spread fees. They change depending ... you
can all the spread fees on their information page - they change depending on what it is
you're trading, and when - they change over time. But, that's how they make their money.
There are a lot of people on Etoro. They've done quite an incredible job, they came out
with copytrading, really promoted it so that people like me can say "Alright, I don't know how
to trade, but I want to be in this .... Alright I'm going to copy that guy, for free. Who's
awesome, and has done this for 5 years, or 10 years." It's an unbelievable idea. So they've
done really well in promoting their site and getting it kind of to the top. For them, at
this point, to risk the reviews by screwing people over, by not giving them their money
back - that would be an insane business decision. Their business model is good. Etoro will be
making a lot of money out of all of us... A lot of money, but they're providing a really
really kind of really good service, fair enough. But it's not in their interest to rip us off.
That's what I kind of realised... I realised how big it was and how they don't need to
steal - they can make money doing this. More money... If you steal from someone they don't
come back, and they tell other people and those people never come to you in the first
place. If you don't steal and you provide a good service, word spreads,
people trust you and around money and finance and uploading thousands of Euros, you need
trust - you need a lot of trust. So that's where they are... So what I ended - I had
withdrawn my $1000 or whatever, and then I put more in - I think I put about $3,500 in,
and said "Alright, let's have a go at this", traded for a while, really stupidly, instead
of doing the copying as I've told you before, I tried trading by myself, like lost 38% in
October I think it was of last year. so look, here we are ... 38.14% I lost. Wooooooooooo
in October. So, then what happened is come January, I .... I actually studied filmmaking
- I studied radio, film and television production, but I've never used it - i've done other stuff,
I've worked in business and all the rest of it, but I never, I never used that. But I
wanted to make videos - I thought "this is really interesting, I can make videos..."
I just had this itch to make stuff, you know, and so January came and I actually withdrew,
I'll show you here - if I go to my history and I'll go to "this year" because I can only
go as far back as this year, and I go to "Cashflows". So here "Processed Withdrawal Request" that's
where I withdrew $1,700 to buy this camera and to start buying, you know, microphones
and stuff. And then I withdrew another $409 here. Etoro credits were things they used to do
- they used to, when you signed up, if you put in a certain amount, they'd give you a
certain amount of credits... And it was kind of money you could trade with for 3 months
but not real money and then they'd take it back - it was just, I don't know, it was like
an incentive to sign up, but they don't do it any more. So here we are, I withdrew in
January - 23rd of January, I withdrew $1,700. 31st of January, I withdrew $409 - I got both
of those amounts back really quickly with no hassle. I got sales calls again! And you
know "Why ... Hey, is everything O.K? Why are you withdrawing ... " You know this sort of ...
nice American accent from Cyprus going "why are you withdrawing your money?" But,
I just said "Look, I need the money, I'm going to buy a camera." I actually told them, you
know... I was a bit wooooaahhhh - the second someone phones me up and says why .... Authority figure ....
But it's been fine, and I've listened to lots of people talking about Etoro now,
and I've heard people withdrawing 20,000 and not having a problem - really if people came
to withdraw money, and they didn't get it back, it would absolutely kill Etoro's business,
so they can't risk that stuff. They know that if they do it, the person who doesn't get
their money back will be all over the internet spreading it around. So at the moment, from
what I've seen, and from everything I've seen... No they're not a scam, and will I get my money
back? Yes I'll get my money back. You know, and there's people who've put in vastly more
than me who've done that. I can't guarantee in future - I can't guarantee what they'll
do, what they're going to do or what's going to happen to the world economy... I know that there's also insurance.
I know that like, you know, some people have asked "What if the economy crashes and Etoro
goes bankrupt?" Our money's guaranteed to a certain amount - you need to check what
that is - i's different if you're with Etoro EU and if you're with Etoro U.K. I think it's
like there's a 5,000 difference, but I think it's up to 20,000 or 25,000 - don't quote
me on that, go and check yourself. But a certain amount of money is guaranteed by sort of European
law if you're with E.U or with U.K law if you're with the U.K - I don't know about everywhere
else. But a certain amount is guaranteed in case they completely go bust. So yeah, so
far it's looking good... You know, so far...! Keep watching though, and if anyone's heard
anything other than what I'm saying please let me know but so far... No, I've heard quite
a lot about people withdrawing a lot of money and .. Not quite a lot, I've heard it a couple
of times, where people have withdrawn a large amount and instead of getting it all back
in one go, they've got like 4 or 5 payments of, you know, and it's added up to the total
amount, and they've just complained and gone "Why did you do that?" and Etoro went "Sorry!"
and it doesn't happen again. But no, no major problems - it's a good question though...
first one I asked...