When I first started trading on eToro, I had moved some of my funds from an external broker where I had been testing a series of automated trading systems (known as Expert Advisors) on the MetaTrader 4 platform. Automated trading systems seek to open and close trades when given markets conditions exist, often evaluated using various forms of pattern recognition or technical analysis (such as neural networks, time analysis, Elliott wave theory, scalping etc). Some of these systems work very well, but 99.9% cause significant losses very quickly. They are sold to the investor on the promise that they can generate huge returns, often based on some extravagantly specific back-testing data, with very little proven track record in real-time live trading accounts on a stable broker. Read more