Whether you’re an expert or a beginner in the trading industry, choosing the best trading platform for this year is crucial. After all, your capital is always at risk when investing. The investment value can go up or down, so the basic rule is to consider your options.
Let’s dive into this article as we compare eToro vs. Stake side by side and reveal the best crypto platform for Australians.
Quick Summary: In our article eToro vs Stake, you will learn why we think that eToro is the better trading platform out of the two. They both have their strengths and weaknesses but there can only be one winner in the end.
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Basics of eToro and Stake
eToro and Stake are both commission-free trading platforms regulated within Australia but deal in US dollars as the base currency.
They provide dividends but no Dividend Reinvestment Program (DRIP). These trading platforms don’t offer Individual Savings Account (ISA) or Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPP), which are appealing factors to investors to manage medium and long-term goals.
eToro is a multi-asset social trading broker that offers a wide range of tradable assets, cryptocurrencies, currencies, ETFs, commodities, and other financial derivatives to 15 million users in over 140 countries worldwide.
This platform is recommended for investors who are interested in social trading. Account funding options for eToro include bank transfer, credit card, debit card, PayPal, Neteller, and Skrill. It’s said to have better social trading features than Stake, which you will know later in this article.
Stake, on the other hand, is an Australian-based commission-free brokerage platform that allows users to invest in 6,000 US stocks and ETFs. Stake’s account funding options include bank transfer, Linked Macquarie CMA, and POli. It has the best search function as it uses advanced technology and a premium version called Stake Black.
eToro and Stake Features
eToro and Stake have their positive and negative sides, which go down to personal preferences.
EToro is a better option for social traders, but if you want a minimalistic and straight-to-the-point platform, Stake might be more suited to your style.
eToro Features and Services
- Social Trading: as one of the largest social trading communities, eToro allows its users to exchange thoughts, experiences, and knowledge regarding trading and financial markets with one another.
- CopyTrader is a helpful program for inexperienced or beginners in trading to copy from the top-performing traders in eToro. It allows you to choose up to 100 traders to copy from.
- eToro News Feed is a Twitter-like feature that connects traders in one place. Your newsfeed is based on the market and traders you follow and what you have invested in.
- The Popular Investor Program gives investors who belong to this program an advantage to build their own investment program and receive a 2% of Assets Under Management (AUM) when copied by users. Only responsible traders with low-risk scores and a minimum investment track record can join the program.
- eToro Demo Account is a virtual account that gives users a chance to practice their trading and investment strategies before investing their real money in your real account. Users are provided with $100,000 in the demo version, which is more than enough for cryptocurrency demo trading.
- eToro Insights are provided to inform users about the current state of the market through daily blogs and notifications.
- Watchlist is a feature that comes in handy when categorizing markets and seeing how they perform. Users can also add top-performer traders to follow their trades and updates.
By the way, you can find our full eToro review here!
Stake Features and Services
- Search is the best feature Stake is known for. You can easily search for stocks related to the keyword you type in your search bar, which is a valuable tool when you have difficulties remembering stock names in the industry. Upon putting in a name or keyword in the search, you’ll find related chart analysis, recent data, stock news, and related stocks.
- The dashboard clearly shows what you have invested in, units, values, overall returns, and day-to-day performances.
- Watchlist in Stake is different from eToro. While eToro allows you to group your markets and stocks in the watchlist, Stake lists it all in one. If you only have a few stocks to handle, Stake is suitable but it can get confusing when you are following multiple stocks at once.
- Track and Review Investments in Stake allows you to download reports for a full review of your recent trade and cash movements in your account. Users can review each transaction with detailed descriptions and other investment activities in your account.
Trade Offerings
Stake and eToro have significant differences when it comes to trade offerings.
eToro provides a broader range of available markets to trade. However, Stake makes up for it by providing better depth.
While you can only invest in shares and EFTs when using Stake, with eToro, you can additionally invest in crypto, commodities, Forex, and CFDs.
Stake offers a simplistic style of trading, unlike eToro.
The stocks you see in Stakes are what you can really put investments in, while eToro adds stocks in their list even though they are temporarily not tradeable. Users just need to wait until the stock is available to trade again, which can be disappointing for some investors who want to take advantage of the stock growth.
Types of Trading Orders
- Buy or sell at market price
- Use leverage and short selling
- Set amounts of unit and rate
- The set dollar amount limits how much you can spend.
- Set Stop Loss helps reduce future potential losses if the market is down.
- Set Take Profit Margins to set a limit on your profit.
- Fractional Investing is buying a fraction of a share instead of the whole unit.
There are 3 Levels of Brokerage Packs in Stake:
- Starter includes unlimited free trades, fractional shares, and market orders only.
- Unlimited includes free trades, fractional shares, market orders, Advanced orders (Limit and Stop), and Priority Acess to new listings.
- Black includes unlimited free trades, fractional shares, market orders, Advanced ==orders (Limit and Stop), priority access to new listings, and Primary customer support.
The following are the type of trading orders for Stake:
- Limit Orders are placed for a whole number of shares at a specified price.
- Market Orders are the order to buy and sell stock at the best price available.
- Stop Orders trigger market sales when stock passes below a specific price.
- Stop Buy is an order that will place a market buy when the stock passes above a specific price.
- Pattern Day Trading Rule only applies to Stake Black subscribers as they trade unsettled funds.
- The PDT Rule cannot make three-day buy trades in a “rolling” five-day period. The five-day period pertains to trading five days in a row.
- The Maximum Order Size is 10,000 shares in the US markets with minimum trades size of $10.
- Fractional Investing allows you to invest in small amounts instead of buying individual shares.
- Unsettled Funds Trading
Fees
eToro and Stake both have zero commission fees when it comes to trading.
In eToro, you can register for free, and then you’re given $100,000 for the demo account you can practice trading with. However, fees are charged for some trades and withdrawals like any other platform.
CFD positions that stay open overnight incur fees as an interest payment to cover leverage you use overnight. These charges are called weekend and overnight fees used to keep positions open over the weekend. When opening a new trade, these fees appear at the bottom of the trade window.
Although Stake has no brokerage fees, there are currency exchange fees such as:
- The FX fee is $0.70 for every AU $100 transferred, an FX spread of 0.7%.
- 2% charge for credit or debit card fee per transfer if you use these methods for your Stake account.
- For faster money transfer from Stake to your account within the next 24 hours, 0.5% is charged in every transaction. If you want to transfer a US dollar to Stake, a transfer fee of $5 is applied.
- A one-off $5 fee is charged for US taxation when signing up to Stake.
Platform Education
The advantage of using eToro for inexperienced traders and beginners is its demo account feature which isn’t available in Stake.
Only knowledgeable traders are likely to profit in Stake, while eToro makes it possible to earn money while learning. Charting qualities are also better in eToro than that of the Stake platform.
This is actually the greatest selling point of eToro for me. It is so much fun to play around with the demo account and after some time, you’ll know enough to get started with a real account.
eToro vs Stake Conclusion
eToro and Stake are both great platforms for investing.
However, eToro appears to be a better brokerage platform than Stake because it is easier to use, especially for those new to trade and financing. eToro also offers a variety of markets to trade, including CFD, which isn’t available in Stake.
Aside from that, you can also get a significant commission from people who copy your trading by joining the eToro Popular Investor Program.
If you want an all-in platform, go for eToro. But if you prefer the straightforward and much cleaner interface, opt for the Stake platform.
Related comparisons: eToro vs Swyftx, eToro vs CoinSpot
Warren is the co-founder of CoinCryption. He has a passion for cryptocurrency and has been involved in this space for more than 7 years. His other love is digital marketing and has over 15 years of experience.