Forex Trading Made for Newbies: eToro Online Platform Review
admin on August 20th, 2008
When it comes to learn forex basics, there is simply no better platform than eToro. Although we are aware of how promotional the last sentence sounds, it reflects how truly we feel about this broker.
Started in 2006, the founders of this company had the objective of pioneering a new kind of trading forex that would be as powerful as the other platforms, but much easier and intuitive to understand for those — and these days there are many — who are approaching currency trading for the first time.
eToro Platform Features
Once downloaded, the platform is immediately recognizable for its user friendliness. Below is a screenshot of the demo account:
When compared to a standard trading platform, the differences are outstanding. Not included in the picture is a general chatroom which you can use (along with the site forum) to exchange ideas with other users: in fact, social interaction tends to play a big role, when you also factor in the live chat support, which is available during all trading hours.
While the five buttons on the top of the page may seem to be dedicated to different purposes, they in fact serve the same role of letting you trade currency pairs easily in different “formats”, enabling you to choose the one that best suites your needs (we personally prefer the first two).
eToro Tutorials
At the bottom of the page you can see a link button named “tutorials”, which contains videos and articles which serve the purpose of introducing you both to the basic forex trading techniques and helping you find your way around the platform. Here, the five trading “formats” which you can adopt are also explained in detail.
From that section, you can also learn about eToro trading championships, which allow you to win several cash prizes by simply winning a demo trading contest, without actually depositing or having to invest any of your money. If you win a trading contest, chances are you’ll become profitable with the live trading too!
Advanced Features: Charting, Stop/Limit Orders and Customizable Leverage
The eToro charting tool is simple and makes you focus on the things that really matter, avoiding unnecessary details. But simple doesn’t mean “primitive”: in fact, you can learn how to place advanced orders such as stop and limit orders to decide when to automatically exit your trade once the pair reaches a certain value.
Leverage is also completely customizable, and we feel that this is an essential aspect to any trading platform. Changing your leverage on the fly and from trade to trade means being able to experiment different trading strategies such as scalping or intra-day trading effectively controlling your risk exposure.
One of the thing we appreciate most about the platform is the fact that, unlike just all of the brokers we’ve encoutered so far, their trading conditions in the demo account are realistic for a novice trader, the “fake money” capital being only $2,000 instead of the typical $100,000, a huge sum which often causes traders to make trading look much easier than it actually is.
A Final Word on eToro
Overall, we feel eToro is an excellent place where to start learning forex trading “by doing”, immediately applying what you’ve been reading about this market to an easy to use platform, trading on market values, without risking your own money (unless you choose to deposit). We encourage novice forex traders to try it out and comment on it here.
