INTERESTINGLY, many Filipinos have already tested the depth of the water in another river, hence currently trading and investing in US stocks – Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB), Tesla (TSLA), and many other market titans – through credible international online brokers like eToro.
While I am still into dipping just my fingers, this article but serves as an introductory guide on how to invest in US stocks while in the Philippines. With all the financial technologies (fintechs) these days, I must say that investing in stocks has become even more convenient and promising.
Before you test the depth with either foot (never ever with both feet), be forewarned about the high risk of this investment regardless of the markets. Equally, I am in no position to give you any related piece of advice. This but merely provides information and additional knowledge.
eToro itself tells that you should seek advice from an independent and suitably licensed financial advisor and ensure that you have the risk appetite, relevant experience, and knowledge before you decide to trade and invest.
[1] Open an eToro (Online Broker) Account. eToro is the world’s leading social trading and multi-asset brokerage company that offers a wide array of tools to invest in the capital markets. Its online platform has both manual and social trading features.
eToro’s social trading enables its clients to follow the financial trading activities of other clients and use its CopyTrader system to replicate everything these trades do in real-time.
For manual traders, eToro provides a selection of stocks, currencies, commodities, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, and indices through its own innovative trading platform. Using the professional tools and analyses on eToro, traders can track and invest in a variety of financial instruments.
[2] Get Your Account Verified. Just like when you opened your local online stock investment account (such as with COL Financial), you also need to verify your real identity with eToro. Verification process takes a few steps which normally require your complete profile and address, personal trading (knowledge, strategy, purpose, and risk) assessments, and other documents to upload such as IDs. Once finished, wait for one to three days before your account gets fully verified.
[3] Fund Your Account. Funding your eToro account is quick and simple. There are various payment methods to choose from. As of this writing, the account funding channels available in the Philippines include credit and debit cards (Visa and MasterCard), GCash (physical) MasterCard, PayMaya (virtual and physical) Visa or MasterCard, online bank transfers (via DragonPay), and PayPal. Read more about funding your eToro account here.
[4] Pick and Buy Your First Stocks. Executing a trade (BUY order, for instance) can be a bit more complicated because you can buy smaller units of stocks instead of the actual number (or board lots) of shares.
However, what makes it more interesting is that you can set specific limits for your losses (Stop Loss) and profits (Take Profits). In other words, your investment is automatically pulled out of the market as soon as either limit is reached, and your money is credited back to the wallet.
You can also apply some leveraging in order to gain more exposure with minimal equity as part of your investment strategy. Higher leverage means higher risk. Lower leverage means lower risk. For beginners, it is always recommended to use the lowest leverage (X1 Leverage).
[5] Learn More About Other Platform Features. Other than your portfolio, your eToro online account includes other features which allow you to organize a list of traders, markets, and stocks that can be worth the follow (Watchlist), discover activities and insights of the traders that you already follow (Newsfeed), read related research and trades (Trade Markets), and interestingly search through other traders who you may want to copy or follow (Copy People).
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