Important update: Some of you have asked about stock dividends. Dividends are a portion of the company’s earnings distributed to shareholders as decided upon by the company’s board of directors. As you know when you trade stocks at eToro you buy/sell CFDs and don’t hold actual shares. Nevertheless, there will be dividends paid (for long positions) and charged (for short positions) for every stock trade (leveraged or unleveraged) at eToro. The dividend amount will be credited/debited at the end of each trading day, according to the number of units of stock you are holding, and will be based on the dividend amount announced for each stock.
As you all know, stock CFDs trading at eToro has so far been done through orders, aggregated and executed in daily batches.
But that is all about to change! We are extremely proud and incredibly excited to announce the upcoming launch of real-time stock trading on our platform.
Starting April 19th you will be able to open a position on any of the 230 stock CFDs we currently offer, in real-time using all our trading platforms (be it the WebTrader, or the Mobile Trader apps).
That means instantaneous trade execution, which will enable you to take advantage of intraday price movements on stocks, just like you do on every other instrument.
And that’s not all! Integrating real-time stock trading across our systems will have multiple advantages. You will be able to:
– Open both Long (BUY) and Short (SELL) positions on all stocks
– Leverage your stock trades by x2 or x5, or use no leverage (x1) like you did before – it’s up to you!
– Open and close stock positions from the WebTrader and from the Mobile Trading app – without going through the eToro OpenBook
– Use Stop Loss and Take Profit orders to limit losses and lock in profits and edit them 24/7
– Trade 24/7 – when the markets are closed your trade will generate an order which will be executed as soon as the markets open
– Copy more diverse traders – as more and more investors add stocks to their portfolios your Copy experience will become more diversified
– Invest as little as $50 in any stock – we enable fraction share investment, which means that you can invest as much as you want, no matter what the share price is.
Before you get started, here’s what you need to know about real-time stock CFDs trading:
Variable Spreads: Since you’ll now be able to open both long and short positions on stocks, each stock will come with a buy and sell price, which means a spread between the two. However, stocks don’t have fixed spreads, the difference between the bid and ask prices is determined by market participants (buyers and sellers) – therefore the spread you will see on eToro will also change according to market conditions. This means that you have to place your Stop Loss and Take Profit orders carefully, to prevent them from closing your position due to the spread widening unexpectedly.
Holding fees: Buying stock CFDs entails paying a small holding fee. The holding fee (similar to the rollover fee in currency markets) will be charged once a day. You will be able to see all holding fees listed on our fees page once real-time stock trading is launched. Note that there will be no holding fees charged for unleveraged long positions (leverage of x1).
Changes to Stop Loss: Sometimes stocks, just like any other market, have periods of low liquidity (meaning it’s harder to buy or sell a certain amount). To protect you against losing more than the amount you’ve invested in the stock position (long or short), we will no longer allow setting the Stop Loss rate at 100% of the amount. The maximum Stop Loss rate will be specific for each stock and will be shown inside the open trade pop up.
Market orders: As mentioned above, you will be able to open a market order whenever the market is closed; this is true for stocks as well as for currencies, commodities and indices. Placing a market order means that the trade will be executed at the first available rate when the market opens. It also means that you can now copy over the weekend and if you choose to copy open positions, all open positions will be copied when the market opens.
In addition, it’s important to notice that with this change, the amount allocated to an order will not be available for trading, since the order amount will be considered as “reserved” equity unless you should cancel the order.
Trade size limitations: Bitcoin trades will be limited to 10 units per trade, and stock CFD trades will be limited to $10,000 per trade.
A big thank you goes out to our development team who have worked day and night to finally bring you real-time stock trading, and to you, our social investment community, who have given us invaluable feedback on the matter of stock trading on our platform. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Are you as excited as we are about real-time stocks? Give us a shout out and let us know what you think!