FAQ

Deciding to copy someone else’s portfolio is a significant financial step. So, why should you copy my portfolio in particular? I enjoy the investing process, but I also take it very seriously. I am aiming to create financial prosperity for future myself. I invest for the long term and have designed the portfolio to avoid sudden losses from swings in the markets. You should also consider diversifying by also finding other investors to copy or balancing with some of your own individual stock selections.

With this portfolio it is very important to stay invested for a significant period of time – at least 12 months. This is because I am a long-term investor and I do not obsess over price charts or chase immediate gains. So, please do not expect to see immediate profits within days of copying me. It will take time.

I only invest in company stocks – also known as shares or equities. A proportion of the companies that I invest in are called REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts, pronounced "reets") which are just companies whose main business is the generation of income from owning, leasing out, developing and operating real estate assets such as warehouses, offices, factories, retail parks and residential properties. I don’t invest in crypto, currencies or gold. Generally, I look for companies that are under-valued by the stock market. Often these will be quite boring companies, as opposed to tech, for example. I also avoid airlines and travel companies. More often than not I will invest in UK companies, but not exclusively. Generally speaking, I avoid emerging markets because I don’t understand them so well - hence, most of my positions will be UK, Europe, USA. Yes, I do hold a small Bitcoin position, but this is just for fun to see what happens in 10 years! I will never change the size of this position now.

As the old saying goes, 'time in the market is more important than timing the market'. For the genuine, disciplined, long-term investor, the time to invest is always right now. You could have entered the market at any point in the last 100 years, even right before any of the historic crashes, and still made a lot of money (provided you didn't panic and stayed invested for the long term, of course). For my portfolio, you do not need to worry about copying at a certain time, or on a certain day, or waiting for some specific event to take place, because my strategy is a long-term one. The important thing in general with investing is to just start and let time do the rest. It is also a good idea to invest regularly. This helps to smooth out market fluctuations and also takes advantage of a phenomenon called 'dollar cost averaging'. If you invest regularly, sometimes the market will be up, and at other times it will be down. On the occasions that it is down, if you are adding funds regularly, your money will go further (it will buy more shares, because the price is lower). Over time, with patience, this has a magnifying effect on the compounding of your investment. Basically, if you invest regularly, you take advantage of price dips more regularly.

The minimum on the platform is $200. However, I suggest a minimum of $500 to make sure you can replicate the whole portfolio when you copy the open trades. How much you are willing to invest also depends on your own financial circumstances of course. In general, you should aim to spread your total investment over more than one asset or trader in order to diversify - i.e. don't put all of your eggs in one basket!

I am at Champion level on the Popular Investor program right now. You will see that I spent two years building my skills and experience on the platform before entering the popular investor scheme. This was so that I could gain experience and establish a track record for people to see. It is my aspiration to move to the next level in due course and to that end I am currently studying for my CISI Level 3 certification, which will qualify me to move up. My exam is at the end of June 2022.

No, you do not pay any fees for copying my portfolio. This is the great aspect of the eToro platform!

When you decide to copy an investor, you will see of course that they already have an existing portfolio. You probably like the design of the portfolio, hence why you are thinking about copying them. When you copy you will be asked whether you wish to copy open trades. This means that you will buy into the portfolio as it stands – i.e. you will replicate the existing portfolio and own the same shares, in the same proportions, as the existing portfolio. If you choose not to copy open trades, you will only own the shares of any new trades made by the investor after the point you start copying them – i.e. you will not replicate the existing portfolio. It is always best to make sure you copy open trades. This is because the portfolio is designed with the long-term future in mind. If you do not copy the existing portfolio you will not be copying the existing strategy and may have different overall performance in the future.

Yes, of course. It is a good idea to drip-feed your investments on a regular basis, if you can afford to do so. Just use the ‘Add Funds’ button against the copy.

You can stop copying me and remove your funds at any time. Simply un-copy. It may take a day to unwind the individual positions because you may need to wait for those global markets to open before eToro can execute the close. If you only wish to remove some of the profit, you can just press pause before withdrawing some portion of your funds. However, as with all investing, you should try to avoid removing profits because leaving them in the investment is the secret to compounding your returns over time.

No, I will never use leveraged trades. If you’re not sure what leverage means for trades, basically it allows traders to borrow money for a short period of time to buy assets. If the trade goes in your favour, you can massively amplify your profits this way. However, if the trade goes against you it can get very expensive, very quickly. Using leverage is very risky and your really have to know what you’re doing. It is more of a trader tactic than an investor tactic. I do not do it.

No, I will never use short selling. If you’re not sure what short selling means, basically it is the act of placing a bet on the chance that a particular stock price will fall. The difference between the price at the time you open the ‘sell’ position and the price when you decide to close the position will be the profit. Short selling is pretty risky and your really have to know what you’re doing. It is more of a trader tactic than an investor tactic. I do not do it.

When you open a position (i.e. buy some shares), eToro will allow you to set something called ‘Take Profit’ and ‘Stop Loss’. Take profit sets a cap on the value of the position at which point eToro will automatically cash it in for you. Stop loss is the opposite. If the value of the position falls below a certain level, eToro will automatically cash in for you to minimize your losses. These are both inappropriate tactics for long-term investors such as me. They are very useful tools for people who trade, rather than invest. But investors need to keep manual control over when to sell positions. The stop loss is especially dangerous for investors because it would close positions that are in the red, thus locking in the losses. Investors prefer to be patient and wait for longer periods of time to allow the positions to recover.

The terms investing and trading are often used inter-changeably. But, they are very different strategies. Investors are in for the long-haul. They will do careful analysis of the financial state and future prospects of markets, sectors and individual companies and then invest where they find opportunities for long-term growth. Traders are there to take advantage of weekly, daily (or even minute-by-minute) changes in share prices. They effectively place small, frequent bets on whether a share price will go up or down. They are more concerned with market sentiment than the intrinsic value of the assets they buy or sell. I am an investor, not a trader.

Value stocks are those that are under-valued by the current market. They are typically viable and often quite boring-sounding companies with good prospects of long-term performance. Growth stocks are typically start-ups, often found in sectors like tech and bio. These are the small companies that might become very big one day. By picking the right ones and by investing at just the right time, you might make a lot of money. This means they carry a lot of risk and they are also hard to analyse because they are too new. Many of them do not make a profit for a very long time – a lot of them fail before they ever get to profit. Generally speaking, I invest in value stocks.

Crypto – whilst I find crypto very interesting, I believe it carries too much risk. If I were 20 years old, I might be taking more gambles on crypto. But, I am in my 40’s, so I don’t 😊 Gold – precious metals have long been seen as a store of value and a hedge against inflation. However, the historic data actually shows that they do not perform that well in this regard. Also, they are not really value-generating assets. Currencies – trying to make money off the currency markets is a specialist skill, which I do not possess. So, I don’t try it. Airlines, tech, travel, etc. – I generally stay away from these sorts of asset classes most of the time because they can be very volatile and I am trying to avoid volatility in my portfolio. I might occasionally buy a dip of a major tech stock or something like that, but not very often.