60% fees after stopping a copy..
I’ve just discovered the horror of eToro's “Stop Copying → Keep Positions Open” feature. That if you keep positions open after stopping a copy there can be hidden fees of about 60% on your investments. I am sure I am not the first. To explain:
When stopping a copy, the platform often leaves you with many tiny fragmented inherited positions, each carrying its own separate closing fee of 1 usd. This means that it can cost you about 60% of the copy value in fees to manually close each position when they are all 1 dollar usd 50 cents positions. Mad. I had just wanted to keep open a few of the positions and close others- then I saw the fees.
This is not made clear during the process of stopping a copy and adds up to a 50% to 70% tax by etoro for smaller copies of around 1000 usd which is my case. Most users would reasonably assume they are inheriting consolidated stock positions, not 100s of separately chargeable micro-trades with a 1 usd closing fee.
Keeping a copy's positions open should not even be given as an option if this is the case. I cannot believe eToro allows this.
I’ve otherwise had a positive experience on the platform, but this is a very , very unpleasant and demotivating surprise as it's for my son and I. See one of 100s of tiny positions below that choosing "Stop copying - keep positions open" gave. You can call me dumb but I would not have done it if I had known this would happen.
