The financial markets are no longer as exclusive as they used to be, and these brokers use technology to make it even more accessible by any person. These are two standout retail brokers, but now it’s time to figure out the superior broker among them. To decide, they will be weighed on 5 crucial criteria.
Winner in most categories
As you can see below etoro wins in 4/5 different areas and is the superior one, read more in details below.
Regulation
Robinhood represents one of the modern ways investors are making use of AI to create more profit – robo advisors. The company is based in the US where all financial companies must be licensed by the SEC and Robinhood is not an exception. At the same time, client funds are insured by the SIPC for up to $500k and $250k cash. The company is now valued at over $7 billion and has some excellent supporters, not to forget the huge number of clients. The single problem is that Robinhood is available in the US only.
eToro have a global reach through the licensed they have from the FCA in the UK, CySEC in Cyprus and ASIC in Australia.
? The superior broker in this category is eToro for having access to more countries.
Deposit methods
With Robinhood, you can fund your account by bank transfer as the only method to do so. Up to $1k is received instantly while higher amounts can take several days. Traders on eToro don’t have this limitation because their broker allows deposits from PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, Yandex, WebMoney, China Union Pay, Giropay and of course, credit card and bank transfer.
? Winner is obviously eToro.
Assets available
The markets made available by Robinhood are stocks, ETFs, options and cryptocurrencies. In all cases, these are actual assets and not CFDs. However, eToro mainly provides CFDs for Forex pairs, stocks, indices, ETFs, commodities and cryptocurrencies. Among the assets provided directly and not as CFDs are ETFs, stocks and cryptocurrencies, but these have to be traded without leverage.
? Therefore, the superior broker is eToro.
Fees
Investing money through, say, a hedge fund, is expensive because you’re paying someone to pick the best investments for you. Robinhood is thus a superior broker because it is much cheaper through the use of computer algorithms. Last time we checked, computers don’t appear on the payroll, and therefore the charges are much lower. In fact, this company offers free trading, except when making sell orders as required by the regulators. These charges are negligible and would not be a problem.
Retail brokers like eToro make their money by imposing spreads on the market quotes. A company is free to set their own rates for the size of spread and eToro has a decent range. Other than spreads, there are fees for holding on to trades overnight and on weekends as well as account inactivity fees for idling and withdrawal fees.
? The superior broker is Robinhood by providing free trading.
Trading platforms
Both of these brokers have made use of technology to provide online trading in a visual way through their platforms. Each of them has a platform that can be used on iOS, Android, Mac and PC with various differences. Overall, the eToro platform is much better because it has much more features, especially copy trading the average top trader. This way, eToro is the superior broker in this category and in general when compared to Robinhood.
Also read: “How to make money from copy trading“
