eToro Becomes FINRA Member, Will Offer Social Stock Trading in USA

Healthy competition continues to hone the trading tools at our disposal. eToro was already highly regarded for its feature of copying professional trades by simply following traders you trust. Now, eToro rids itself of commission fees, offers multi-asset trading, and enters FINRA membership.

eToro is Now a FINRA Member

Five years before Robinhood took the center stage, in 2007, eToro launched from Cyprus as a social trading platform with a singular design in mind – transparency in trading. Be it digital currencies, shares, ETFs, indices, or commodities, every eToro user can become a professional trader in a moment’s notice by seeing and copying what other traders are doing.

This year has been especially productive as eToro reached 13 million global users and surpassed $600 million worth of trades. The CEO and eToro founder, Yoni Assia, notes that 2020’s first quarter trounced last year’s by at least 200% in trading volume. However, not all nations were beneficiaries everything eToro’s has to offer.

This all changes this week. eToro’s American subsidiary, eToro USA securities Inc, will upgrade its crypto-only trading to multi-asset trading, either through eToro’s app or desktop portal. For those of you who missed the eToro train, you will be pleased to note that eToro has:

• No management and ticketing fees
• No commission fees on stock trading
• No clearance fees
• Free registration

What Can You Trade With eToro in the USA?

While some regulatory hurdles are harder to overcome, eToro managed to successfully integrate into the US financial system by becoming a FINRA member. Keep in mind that FINRA – Financial Industry Regulatory Authority – although not a governmental body per se, is a self-regulatory organization under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Such integration concludes eToro’s long-standing goal of fully accessing the US market as noted by Guy Hirsch, US Managing Director for eToro:

“The US market is strategic to eToro, and as a global broker-dealer leader we will continue to expand our investments and offerings in the world’s most important financial market, allowing us to offer our unique social trading platform to an even wider audience base that are social media native. This is pivotal in growing our global footprint.”

On another note, you may have noticed that many trading platforms were not initially enthused about providing educational content on a regular basis. This was not the case with eToro. As a social trading platform promoting CopyTrader as its main feature, they are producing regular content, from tutorials and podcasts, to news and market analysis.

Currently operating in 140 countries, the only thing missing, from a competitor’s perspective, is eToro’s own debit card. They plan to launch such a feature later this year. With 40% of Americans saying they won’t use physical banks after COVID-19, eToro could be set to make a major splash in the USA.

Which kind of investing do you prefer? Completely automated or a hybrid approach in the form of eToro’s copying of trades made by other professional traders? Let us know in the comments below.

Disclosure: Tim Fries has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned, and has no plans to initiate any positions within the 72 hours following the publishing of this article. This article expresses the opinions of Tim Fries. Tokenist Media LLC has no position in any of the stocks mentioned, and does not plan to initiate any positions within 72 hours of the publishing of this article. Please consult our website policy for more information.