Is City Index a good trading platform?

Yes, on City Index’s trading platform, you can trade more than 13,500 markets, including 40 equity indices, over 10,000 UK and international shares and ETFs, 19 commodities, and 183 FX pairs. This means they offer more markets than most of the other online trading platforms regulated by the FCA in the UK.

Founded in 1983 City Index has a solid and longstanding presence in online trading; its trading platform is a genuine rival to IG and CMC Markets. In major UK markets, City Index pricing is competitive and often market-leading, but can be expensive for Asian markets.

City Index’s free desktop trading platform is web-based, so there is nothing to download you simply log in and trade on your internet browser. You can create and customise your own workspaces and layouts, adding quotes, charts, news and trading signals. However, you can also use City Index’s Market 360 feature to create a top-down view of an instrument in a single click, which contains charts, quotes, news and product information all in one place.

You can trade or place limit orders directly from a chart or you can click on the bid-ask quote at the top of the page in the 360 view. You can instantly access technical analysis, calendars, and newsflow by clicking on the market analysis, but one of the trading platform’s stand-out features is Performance Analytics which provides constantly updated reports on how to improve your trading, based account history.

Overall, the City Index trading platform is very intuitive to use and it has a clean, clearly laid out interface making it suitable for beginners who want a simple platform with trading signals. It is also advanced enough for experienced traders executing large orders and needing post-trade analytics or voice brokerage as backup.

What does the City Index trading platform look like?

Is FOREX.com a Good Trading Platform?

FOREX.com won Best Forex Broker in the 2025 Good Money Guide Awards.

24-Hour FOREX.com Test

I took FOREX.com out for a 24-hour test drive, to trade with real money and try out some of the key features on the streets of the City of London. Here’s what happened…

“For FX sake”, I thought to myself when faced with writing a review about a forex broker. Firstly because all these brokers do is offer access to the forex market (or so I believed). Secondly, because I’ve never had much success with forex trading.  I find the nuances of intra-day technical analysis too complicated.

I’m an old-fashioned trader – I like to look at the market and think it’s either overvalued or undervalued and, in my mind anyway, that’s easier when looking at a company’s share price, an index or even a commodity. But for some reason, with forex trading, I’ve never really got the hang of it.

Having said that, I have dealt currency for about 20 years now, but more as a broker rather than as a trader. For instance, I used to do some prime brokerage for institutions that would hedge their currency exposure when buying aeroplanes.

But I was so frustrated with how opaque pricing was in currency trading, that I decided to start up my own currency brokerage specialising in high-value currency transfers (£250,000 upwards) and undercutting everyone. It was called Berry FX, you can still see the demo on YouTube. Basically, personal service with the best rates anywhere ever. But now I just let other currency brokers compete for clients by trying to offer the best exchange rates.

But you want to know what I think of FOREX.com.

24 Hour Test

I took FOREX.com out for a 24-hour test drive around the City of London, putting some real trades on whilst going about my business to see if I could make any money.

I started out at the Bank of England with £10,000 on account at 11:30am. Lunch was a few minutes’ walk from the tube station, so I took the opportunity to put some trades on using FOREX.com’s trading signals. I’ve used these for years; back in 2018, they were known as GetGo and it was a standalone forex trading app. When I reviewed it then, I said these were the future of forex trading signals but are they still?

There are a couple of things that make these signals better than the rest.

• They tell you the success rate.
• The signal is linked to an order ticket.

When I was walking down King William Street to L’Antipasto to meet some contacts for lunch, I put a few trades on. First, I looked at the traders that had a historic success rate of over 50% and followed them. Then I looked at trading signals that had a success rate of less than 50% and traded against them. It’s a pretty simple strategy that generally works (not always, though). I used the classic stop/limit risk/reward ratio, aiming for twice the potential loss as a potential win. Again, simple forex trading strategies. The market is not hard to call, but if you get a trade right, it often pays to let it run for longer, but if it’s wrong, close it sooner.

Trading Central

On the way to my next meeting, I took a few moments on London Bridge to look at some of the other signals on FOREX.com: Trading Central. Now, Trading Central has been providing technical analysis to brokers for decades and supplies a constant stream of manually and automatically updated trading ideas throughout the day to give traders an indication of where the markets may go.

It’s not as fluid as the trading signals, as you have to put the trades in manually, but still gives you a bit of stimulus. This is great for someone like me because I generally have an idea of what I want to do from eyeballing a chart (I did, after all, run a technical analysis division for 5 years), but it’s nice to get confirmation of your thoughts one way or another.

Execution

When you are actually trading there are some great other features on the app:

• Swipe to trade: a bit like Tinder (so I hear)
• Chart on tickets: with a quick tap, you can bring up a chart when on the order ticket (to double-check)
• Working orders on charts: when looking at a chart, you can see your working orders and positions
• Position potential: as well as seeing what margin is required when placing a trade, you can also see and set your stops and limits as a potential monetary amount instead of pips

Post-Trade Analytics

Once you’ve done a bit of trading, you can review your trading history and see where you do well and where you can improve. This is a great feature as it can break down how well you trade by time of day, markets or volatility.

You can also set up “Play Maker” if you have a trading strategy and want to stick to it. Obviously, you can’t get that sort of data in a 24-hour test drive, so I’ll have to revisit that another time.

Demo Account

FOREX.com has a pretty good demo account. In fact, it’s hard to tell the difference between the demo and live trading platform. You get the same functionality and as trades are OTC, the same prices.

However, when I opened a demo account to test it, I already had a real account. So after I got my demo account login details, I clicked through to the “Webtrader” portal and (funny or alarming, depending on how you look at it) my live account details were auto-filled in by Google Chrome.

Now, had I not been checking my email, to ensure that the platform had sent me through my credentials, I might not have noticed that I was logging into a live account. It could have been disastrous if I’d started trading away thinking it was paper money. Even more so as you get £10,000 in demo funds and I’d deposited £10,000 in my live account when I took FOREX.com on a 24-hour trading signal test drive.

It reminded me of when a trader thought that he was trading on a demo account and put $1bn worth of orders through and then sued his broker because it voided his €10m profits.

TradingView & MetaQuotes

I had a good play about with TradingView, as it’s now the go-to destination for traders. TradingView is a sort of social network for traders where you can view charts (they are excellent) and post trading ideas (take with a pinch of salt). As TradingView has grown, it has also become an execution venue, so you can link your FOREX.com trading account and deal straight from the charts. This shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for most traders as the charts on the app and web-based platform are provided by TradingView (which, incidentally, is one of the largest financial-based websites in the world now).

You can also trade on MT4, if you are into that sort of thing…

Am I a Forexpert?

I did make money on day one, mainly thanks to putting on a GBP-USD trade that covered most of the losses from some of the other trades. When I used the trading signals 5 years ago, I also made money. Day 2 wasn’t so good. On my way to an investor show, I gave back a few pennies but still ended up on top. But I have to admit my traders were calculated guesses rather than heavily researched positions.

I don’t like holding positions overnight, as day trading reduces not only your margin requirements but also increases the amount of sleep you get because you don’t wake up with cold sweats in the middle of the night worrying about Asian interest rates.

Overall would I recommend forex.com? Yes, if you are going to trade forex and don’t know where to start, as it’s a massive brand with global reach and owned by a listed brokerage with an institutional pedigree. As far as box-ticking is concerned, it ticks the lot. Or should I say pips the lot…

Is Pepperstone a good trading platform?

Pepperstone does have it’s own in the UK but traders mainly use cTrader and MT5/MT5 but is building their own trading platform. This is mainly due to the unreliability of third-party platforms, specifically MT4 app being withdrawn from the App store.

Pepperstone has launched a proprietary trading platform in Australia. Historically, traders have only been able to use MT4, MT5 and cTrader. Both are great platform, but this means that Pepperstone can be more connected to its customers and adapt the platform to their specific needs.

We can expect to see Pepperstone’s proprietary platform rolled out globally shortly.

Overall, Pepperstone’s MT4 is a good option for traders that want to automate their trading or want a basic account with very low costs.

What does Pepperstone’s trading platform look like?

Is Plus500 a good broker?

Yes, Plus500’s trading platform has evolved nicely over the years from a simple interface to an intuitive execution venue for CFDs on the major markets and stocks.

Pricing: It’s dynamic so moves with the market for minimum spreads
Market Access: Very good, Plus500 are always first to try new asset classes
Platform & Apps: Basic execution, but it does the job well
Customer Service: Plus500 doesn’t have a phone option, but its live chat is sufficient
Research & Analysis: Some sentiment, but limited education and analysis.

Overall, Plus500 is a good online trading platform for traders who do not want to do anything more complicated than buy and sell CFDs. The broker does provide sentiment indicators and are quite transparent with costs and fees. In summary:

• Plus500 is a trading platform that offers CFDs.
• You can trade a range of assets on Plus500 including stocks, indices, and currencies.
• There are no commissions when placing a CFD trade on the Plus500 platform but there are some other fees to be aware of.
• The platform offers a range of features including a demo account, alerts, market news, and an economic calendar.
• There are platforms that offer more markets than Plus500.

Is Interactive Brokers trading platform any good?

Interactive Brokers won “best trading platform” in our 2024 and 2023 awards as they offer an exceptionally advanced platform for advanced traders, but also a very simple interface for beginners. They also scored very highly in our annual survey for pricing and market range.

We rank Interactive Brokers as the best online trading platform as it is exceptionally good for sophisticated trading. It offers by far the most access to the most markets through DMA futures, options, physical shares and CFDs. it also has the most advanced execution tools for retail traders, including complex order types such as VWAP, pairs trading, iceberg, and algorithmic trading.

When I was testing the trading platform, one thing that is immediately obvious though is that the desktop version is almost too good for retail traders and most will only use a small percentage of its capabilities. However, new traders should not be put off by its institutional-grade offering. The heavy-duty Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation is available as a download on PC, but there is also a simplified web-based version that is very simple to use called Portal.

On the web-based Portal trading platform, you can execute trades as physical deals, CFDs, futures and options (on the widest range of stocks). There are lots of webinars (with the founder Thomas Peterffy and his team) that cover trading strategy. You can also evaluate your portfolio based on how ethical your positions are. There are stock scanners, fund scanners, bond scanners, a fundamentals explorer for hunting out undervalued stocks and you can convert currency at some of the best exchange rates around.

IBKR also gives you more control over your currency exposure. Most other trading platforms automatically convert currency when you trade instruments outside your base currency but IBKR lets you do it manually on a per-trade or ad hoc basis.

What does Interactive Brokers trading platform look like?

Does Spreadex have a good trading platform?

I’ve been using Spreadex now for at least 20 years now. I’ve worked with them professionally and know them socially. So in my updated 2024 review of Spreadex, I’m going to highlight what sort of broker they are and what type of traders will get the most from their trading platform and service.

There are two types of broker in the derivatives world, those who spot a gap in the market and try to exploit it, and those that are in it for the love of the business. With my broker’s hat on, and in my expert opinion, they are the latter. You can tell by the quality and turnover of their staff, the fact that Spreadex generates the majority of their business from referrals rather than a massive digital market budget and the longevity of their service, that if you are going to trade, they are a broker worth putting your business through.

Market access

First off, what can you trade? Spreadex started off offering financial spread betting, which (as I hope you’ll know if you are reading this review) is a tax-free way to trade the financial markets. Trades are structured as bets so you don’t have to pay capital gains tax on your profits. However, as the appeal of trading with a UK-based broker (for regulatory and financial security purposes) has increased, Spreadex introduced CFD trading for non-UK residents a few years ago.

You can trade over 10,000 markets with Spreadex, so, if you are more adventurous than most who just seem to want to tap away on Tesla and Netflix these days, they also have a huge range of smaller-cap shares to trade. A lot of brokers don’t offer these, as the majority of clients stick to the top ten traded instruments and tend to add markets when clients request them. However, going back to my point earlier about service, Spreadex has a huge range of markets available to trade, before you need them, not after you ask for them.

They also have a very good range of indices, with access to Asian and European markets, as well as the major UK and US markets. Options trading is fairly limited – you can only trade on the FTSE 100 (UK100) and DAX 40 (German 40), but you can write options (go short) with Spreadex, whereas some brokers only allow you to buy options.

You can trade the usual commodities, currencies, bonds and fixed-income markets (I don’t know why I still find the phrase Bund, Bobl and Shatz funny when looking at treasuries watchlists after all these years). If you want to have a punt on themes rather than individual assets Spreadex has a wide range of ETFs for placing sector bets on things like Healthcare, Cannabis, CyberSecurity and so on so you don’t have to buy a load of individual shares.

However, most of the ETFs are US based, there are not that many UK or European ETFs which can be traded in the morning without having to wait for the Americans to get out of bed. There are also a few ETFs, that track markets like Saudia Arabia (where an outright index isn’t always available).

Spreadex Pricing, Charges & Fees

There isn’t much to say about pricing when it comes to reviewing decent brokers these days because they are all about the same, and that is to say, very competitive. Spreadex earns money by widening the spread from the bid/offer price and including commission in that. For UK stocks, this is 0.1%, so for example, if you buy 10,000 Lloyds shares with Spreadex, the spread will be 49.21/49.33 instead of 49.26/49.28. So £10,000 worth of Lloyds would cost you £4,933 instead of £4,928. So a £5k trade will cost you £5, a £10k trade will cost you £10, a £100,000 trade will cost you £100, and so.

With US stocks Spreadex have also recently capped the spread on larger stocks at $3.5 to make trading the US market cheaper. For example, they mark up spreads by 0.15% for stocks like Tesla, but the spread is capped at 3.5. So, if Tesla shares are $16922.5 offered, then if they were marked up by 0.15% the Spreadex offer price would be $16948 (rounded). But because spreads are capped at $3.5, you would buy at $16926. So if you are trading at £1 per point as a spread bet that is a saving of £22 on roughly a £17k trade versus a broker who charges the same but hasn’t capped their spreads.

If you are holding positions in the slightly longer term Spreadex charge 3% over under SONIA, which is not quite the cheapest, but still very low compared to other brokers like eToro for example, that charges 6.4% over/under SONIA. To put that in perspective, if you have £10,000 exposure with eToro with SONIA at 4% for a year, it would cost you £1,400 in overnight funding, but with Spreadex only £650.

For the major FX, commodity, and index markets, Spreadex are pretty much inline with everyone else.

Spreadex Platform & Apps

Way back when I first opened my account, I remember being sent a VHS video of a very charming curly-haired man standing on Primrose Hill (I think) with the City as a backdrop explaining the pros and cons of spread betting. But Spreadex has come a long way from just providing voice brokerage to having one of the best trading platforms out there.

One thing I particularly like about the Spreadex trading platform is that it has been built and innovated inhouse. For example, they have added the ability to overlay Pro Trend Lines. This automatically adds support and resistance levels, which takes a bit of the guesswork out of potential entry and exit points. You can also, overlay the VWAP, a price point, particularly useful, as it’s what hedge funds use for working daily orders that are well above the normal market size.

A nice feature of the Spreadex app is that you can change the columns from just change, to monthly and yearly high and low. Plus, should you, for some reason, want to do technical analysis on your phone instead of a proper computer, you can add indicators, free draw and overlay indicators like Fibonacci ranges whilst out and about.

There is a huge amount of technical indicators for advanced traders, but for beginners, Spreadex has all the usual range of risk management tools like stops, guaranteed stops (which protect you if the market gaps), trailing stops (so you can lock in profits the more profitable a position gets) and price alerts. More relevantly, though, if you are a beginner, and you don’t understand something, instead of having to wade through a quagmire of online educational resources, you can pick up the phone and ask for something to be explained.

Spreadex is really a very good all-round trading platform that can cater for large customers as well as beginners. It’s simple, and modular so you can create your own desktop environment (if you’re trading on multiple screens). Plus, along with the rest of the world, Spreadex is now integrated with TradingView.

Research & Analysis

There is also enough news flow to keep you informed and up-to-date with market news without getting overloaded. Through the app and web platform, you get access to the economic calendar of market-moving events, news filtered by product from Thomson Reuters, and trading updates from Spreadex dealers, highlighting the day’s key factors, and what traders should be aware of.

Customer Service At Spreadex

One thing that has driven me mad over the past few years is that trading platforms seem to have become massively self-serving. In that, they are only interested in getting more customers, and onboarding traders, so that they can say they have seen massive growth and a race to the bottom for pricing. What this means, of course, is that there is too much emphasis on the platform and not enough on the client. For example, if you try and phone up most brokers, you can’t actually get through to anyone to ask a simple question from someone who knows what they are talking about.

But, when writing this review, I needed clarification on a couple of points. First I used the chat box on the Spreadex trading platform and got through to someone almost immediately, without even a whiff of an automated chatbot. Then, when I phoned the dealing desk for something else, the phone was picked by one of their dealers, who was very helpful and sent all the info I needed via email a few minutes later. For retail traders, you don’t really get that anywhere else.

Is IG's trading platform any good?

Yes, it’s a great all-round trading platform. Here’s five things that I think make it stand out.

1 – Tax free profits

IG’s main web-based trading platform is used by CFD and Spread Betting clients, although clients can also download MT4, ProRealtime and L2 Dealer. The platform is developed in-house and is suitable for most traders where you can access 17,000 markets to trade as a CFD or financial spread bet. The trading platform also provides access to non-leveraged trading accounts for physical shares dealing and ETF investing with SIPP and ISA options.

2 – Automated trading strategies on MT4 and IG Markets

There are a few limitations to the main platform though, for example, there is no facility for automated trading strategies. However, IG offers two alternative platforms (MT4 & 5) for those clients who use Algos and trading bots. However, for most users, IG’s in-house platform will be more than sufficient for their needs.

3 – Trading signals

Some stand-out features of the trading platform are how Autochartist and PIA trading signals are copied straight to order tickets and their ability to constantly innovate features such as adding logarithmic charting and creating news and research around what traders are looking at on the platform.

4 – Competative pricing

Compared to other online trading platforms IG’s pricing is always competitive, they are by no means the cheapest broker, but they are not expensive. IG tends to win business based on market range, service, and liquidity and keeps spreads to the lower end of the industry standard.  Whilst pricing is an important factor when choosing a trading platform, with IG, you get what you pay for and that is a fairly priced excellent all-round service.

5 – Deep liquidity

On some of the major traded indices and FX pairs, IG’s CEO told me that their internal liquidity can be better than the on-exchange order book. Which means for larger traders trading popular markets, you can potentially get better fills than trading with DMA.

What does the IG trading platform look like?

Overall, IG has one of the most comprehensive trading platforms around. And after 46 years of offering margin products to retail customers, IG knows what works and what customers expect from their broker, namely, reliable pricing, technology and customer service.

Is CMC Markets' Trading Platform Any Good?

Yes, one of the stand-out features of CMC Markets’ main trading platform is the client sentiment indicators. Whilst most trading platforms provide this information, where you can see what percentage of the client base is long or short an asset, with CMC Markets you can break sentiment down by time frame and profitable clients. This, essentially, gives you an indication of where the smart money is going.

Out-of-hours post and pre market trading (24/5)

Starting Tuesday, 17 June 2025, traders will be able to spread bet and trade CFDs 24 hours a day, five days a week (24/5) on over 60 major US stocks, including the ‘Magnificent Seven’ (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla). Trading opens at 1am (UK time) on Mondays and runs continuously until 10pm on Fridays.

Share Baskets

Another key feature I liked when testing the platform was the share baskets. CMC has created its own sectors on popular themes like driverless cars, cannabis and cyber security. These give traders the ability to quickly speculate on themes through share baskets which are quicker to build than ETFs, meaning as a trader you can take advantage of sector moves quicker than on other trading platforms.

Market Access

CMC Markets’ trading platform has one of the widest market ranges for CFD and spread betting clients: you can trade over 12,000 instruments including an industry-leading 338 forex pairs, 124 commodities, and over 1,000 ETFs. However, CMC Markets doesn’t offer as many UK shares (745) and US stocks (4,968) as some other platforms, instead focussing on the most heavily traded and liquid companies.

What Does the CMC Markets Trading Platform Look Like?

Compared to IG, the CMC Markets trading platform feels a bit more professional: it has a classic black background, more flashing lights and a slightly more urgent trading ticket. As such, it is more suitable for more active traders trading intra-day.

Is XTB a good trading platform?

Yes, XTB’s trading platform offers access to the usual markets and pricing is fairly standard, but what sets it apart from other brokers is some of the trading platform’s unique functionality.

Most brokers offer it now but XTB was actually one of the first brokers to offer post-trade analysis, where the trading platform will show you where you are profitable and where you lose money.

One nice feature is the ability to close all of your positions in one go. A time saver if you are a day trader and want to be flat at the end of the day, or if you want out of the market in a hurry.

XTB produce their own market news, which is constantly updated throughout the day, which you can filter by asset class. If you combine this with the heatmap feature, stock scanner, sentiment indicators and automatically updated “hot” watchlist that shows where the order flow is going you can hunt out trading ideas

Overall, XTB is a very good trading platform that offers a lot more than just vanilla trading, suitable for new traders or more experienced investors wanting to create and hedge their own markets.

Is Saxo's trading platform any good?

Yes, I’ve been using Saxo’s online trading platform for around ten years now and it’s evolved nicely over the years. The core functionality remains consistently high-end, whilst the front end is given a facelift every few years.

Whilst Saxo does offer MT4, it’s own proprietary trading platform (SaxoTraderGo) is a well-established work-horse. The platform is exceptionally robust and suitable for institutional-grade hedge fund businesses as well as individual traders. It really stands out among peers as a serious platform for serious traders that is backed up by the products on offer, such as DMA CFDs, on-exchange futures, options, a huge range of bonds and access to dealers via voice brokerage who can work complex orders for you.

Direct Market Access

Unlike more retail-based trading platforms where CFD commissions are built into the spread with Saxo, you trade at the bid-offer (or DMA) and commission is charged afterward. This enables clients to trade inside the market price if they have opted for direct market access.

Pricing

Commissions are very competitive as Saxo Market is most suited to high-volume and high-net-worth traders. Smaller traders may be put off by auxiliary costs such as having to subscribe to live pricing from exchanges, level-2 data fees, and minimum commission charges.

Market Access

Saxo Market’s trading platform market range is vast, you can go long or short over 19,000 instruments, which is more than any other retail derivatives provider with the SaxoTraderGO platform or apps.

Analytics

The platform also has built-in post-trade analytics so you can see where you have been profitable in the past, and has an integrated research portal, webinars, trading signals, and market analysis.

Account Types

Saxo Markets can be suitable for smaller traders as it has three different tiers of trading accounts – Classic, Platinum and VIP. Classic is the most basic with a minimum deposit of £1,500 whilst the VIP requires at least £1 million in funding, where traders will have access to the tightest spreads and dedicated Saxo service.

What does Saxo’s trading platform look like?

Is eToro good for long term investing?

eToro is a great GIA for investing in the long term if you’re interested in buying major US stocks and copying the portfolios of other successful traders. Jeppe Kirk Bonde, for instance, has historically produced market-beating returns for his 30,000 followers, and now has over $100m copying his portfolio (though past performance is no indication of future results). (Disclaimer: eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.).

Pricing: No account fees or commission – great value and a low minimum account size of £10

Market Access: Access to the most popular global markets through a general investment account. There is limited access to smaller cap shares, but you can invest in crypto, which most other traditional investing accounts don’t let you do. Plus the copy trading feature lets you see what other investors hold in their portfolios and what they think about the,m which you can copy manually or automatically.

App & Platform: really easy to use, no complex order types but that’s not really what eToro is about it’s about discovery.

Customer Service: Quick responses from the live chat and email support and if you’re accuont is over $30k you get a personal account manager.

Research & Analysis: eToro have some really good social channels with educational vides, some excellent “how to” courses (which are free so no need to buy a trading course from a Youtuber. But the most unique thing is the social feed where investors chat about what they are investing in.

However, there are some things I believe eToro could improve for long-term investors from the UK.

The main issue is that the accounts are in USD, and you can’t invest through tax-free wrappers, or into a pension, and there’s limited access to bonds and funds.

eToro also used to absorb the stamp duty on UK shares. But now you have to pay the 0.5% UK stamp duty tax when investing in UK companies, so that tax break has gone.

I explain below why these are issues if you’re investing in the long term.

USD Account Balances

With eToro, your account balance has to be in USD. This is part of how it makes money (when it converts your GBP into USD) but it means that if you buy UK shares, then over time your profits can be eroded by differences in the GBP/USD exchange rate.

Granted this can also work in your favour, but you’re not trading FX – you’re investing. And if the exchange rate moves 5% and you have a £100,000 portfolio, that’s £5,000 lost.

No ISA or SIPP

With an ISA you can invest up to £20,000 a year and no pay tax on the profits. Unfortunately, eToro doesn’t have its own ISA. It does have a co-branded eToro ISA in partnership with Moneyfarm. But Moneyfarm is more of a digital-wealth manager, so you may as well just open a separate account with Moneyfarm – it will at least help you resist the temptation to speculate with your long-term investments.

With a SIPP, you’re investing for your pension and, as with an ISA, you don’t pay tax on your profits. But with eToro you can’t invest in a SIPP, so if you’re buying shares and aim to hold them until you retire, your tax bill at the end of it could be unnecessarily high.

No Funds, Corporate Bonds or Small-Caps

eToro is great at giving investors access to popular markets like US stocks, cryptocurrency and commodities, but its market access is pretty limited. You can’t invest in small-cap growth stocks in the UK, for example. And if you’re building a long-term portfolio, it should be diverse so you should add in some corporate bonds (fixed-income investments) and some funds that spread the risk and invest in lots of shares and bonds for you.

This is a shame, because eToro generally does give people what they want. However, it would be better if it focused a bit more on what people need.

On the positive side, eToro does let you invest in bonds through bond ETFs or fixed-income portfolios like YieldGrowth which contains a range of 13 bonds from Vanguard, iShares and SPDR.

What is eToro’s Platform Like to Use?

• Related guide: How to make money on eToro.