Israeli trading platform, eToro has gained a lot of traction in the past few years. Having established itself as a social trading platform, where novice traders can copy the trading strategies of experts, it has expanded its services in many areas now.
The company revealed to Finance Magnates that it ended 2020 with a gross revenue of $600 million. Also. trading volume hit the roof at over $1.5 trillion, which was 400 percent higher than 2019.
Additionally, eToro witnessed a massive influx of traders in recent years and gained tremendously last year. It has recently revealed that the number of users on the trading platform touched 17 million at the end of 2020. For comparison, it had 13 million traders after the first quarter of last year, meaning there was a surge of 30 percent in its client base.
Mentioning the scaling of the business, the Co-founder and CEO, Yoni Assia, explained how the company focused on “a broad range of expertise, as eToro is a tech company, a multi-regulated broker, and has very strong online marketing capabilities.”
Yoni Assia, Founder and CEO of eToro.
“The last few years have seen a rapid growth in eToro’s headcount reflecting both our global expansion and the growth of our product offering and client base.”
Assia is optimistic about this growing retail trading and believes that “the rise of the retail investor is a trend that is here to stay. Retail investors are increasingly engaging with, and taking greater responsibility for, their investments as their percentage of the market volume are increasing. They are investing in the products and services that they know.”
A Trading Industry Disrupter
Explaining the birth of eToro, Assia said that instead of creating another trading platform, eToro was created as a “social network - a community for traders and investors, where they can execute trades, but also see what others are doing and talk to each other.”
“This social element remains at the core of our offering,” Assia added. “Our copy functionality is what differentiates eToro from other platforms.”
But, eToro did not confine itself with its copy trading functionality. It aggressively expanded its offerings from forex to stocks and from commodities to Cryptocurrencies . And, the expansion followed with the company’s extensive marketing campaign.
Electric Vehicles Stocks Are Everyone’s Favourite
The stock market volatility in 2020 has pushed the demand for stock trading. Though Tesla is making headlines globally for its multi-fold return in the period, the stock of its Chinese competitor remains the favorite among eToro investors.
The brokerage told Finance Magnates that the top three active stocks last year on the platform were Nio, Tesla and Apple, followed by Amazon, Palantir Technologies, Microsoft, Alibaba, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) and NVIDIA Corporation.
However, cryptocurrency seems to be the next major asset class. As Assia highlighted, “2020 was a big year for stocks [but] 2021 to date has been dominated by crypto headlines.”
“So far this year, we have seen crypto trading volumes of more than 25X the same period of time last year,” he added.
Following the Industry Trend
The trading industry has evolved in the past few years, primarily with the disruption by Robinhood. The so-called ‘gamification’ of trading and commission-free has attracted a ton of rookie traders.
Moreover, eToro jumped on this commission-free wagon in 2019 first for its clients in the United Kingdom and Europe, and then it will extend the service across the Atlantic to the US next year.
Further, Assia pointed out that “eToro was the first company to offer commission-free, fractional shares globally.”
“eToro was the first regulated broker in Europe to offer crypto and we believe in crypto as an asset class and that we will see the transfer of wealth onto the Blockchain ,” he added. “eToro continues to innovate in the blockchain space. Staking is a way to offer our crypto investors passive monthly profit, irrespective of crypto price volatility in the market.”
What’s Next?
Despite the aggressive growth of the Israeli brokerage over the past few years, it still has many plans for improving its services, especially its product line. “At present, our focus is on adding more stocks and ETFs to our range,” Assia revealed.
Apart from its core trading business, eToro seems to be diversifying its business as it has a debit card lined-up for launch that will provide “instant cash-out and cash-in functionality.”
“2020 was an amazingly successful year for eToro,” Assia said. “We have entered 2021 with great excitement not least because we will be launching zero commission stocks in the US. In 2020, US regulator FINRA granted eToro's membership application to launch stock trading in the US. eToro will expand its current US offering from crypto trading to become a multi-asset trading platform enabling individuals to manage a portfolio of traditional assets and crypto assets side-by-side in a single, easy to use mobile app or desktop interface.”
