Have you tried it yourself to disprove what I wrote? It doesnāt seems so. Try first and then comment after.
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As I mentioned there is a way to circumvent that if you have revolut account. Works just fine and you donāt pay the fx fee to deposit. The only fee you end up paying is the withdrawal fee of 5ā¬ per transaction. To me I rather pay the withdrawal fee then a fx fee on every trade.
For example letās assume I would invest ā¬1000/month on SMT. Also letās assume (for sake of simplicity) the ROI after one year is 0% and I decide to sell my position. After one year I would have paid,
While buying: ā¬1000x12x(0.0015+0.005)=ā¬78
While selling: (ā¬12000-ā¬78)x0.0015=ā¬17.9
So a total of about ā¬95.9!
As you can see I would rather pay a ā¬5 fee on eToro to process a withdrawal.
Of course the argument that currently eToro seems better option is purely based on fee. I do agree that T212 UI is better and offer more stocks, but eh in the end all we want is to make money.
You will not pay the fee if you keep recycling your US$ and keep in eToro Indefinitely for buy/sale. When you want to withdraw cash make sure you withdraw a large sum of money in one go to minimise the impact of the US$5 flatfee
Does eToro charge a fx fee when you exchange USD to GBP when buying SMT? And again when you sell?
I have not tried myself. But I just have a look of it SMT.L is priced in GBX so it is reasonable to assume they are using their own conversion rate (e.g., fee is added) to convert US$ to GBX. The same thing when you want to fund your eToro AC using UK debit card/ Account.
You could only have US$ account on eToro, not other currencies. Any other currencies will automatically be converted into US dollars at the time of funding or other transaction.
But I fail to understand why would anyone want to trade UK stock priced in GBX on eToro when you still have your T212 account ? Is it not better to keep using T212 for thisUK stock trade as there is no conversion as it is priced in GBX/GBP and you could wrap it under S&S ISA Account. Whether there is stamp duty as one would expect for UK share, I do not know.
To me form now on I will move my US$ trading to eToro gradually but for UK stocks I will still be using my S&S ISA Account on T212.
Fx fee is only paid once, when you deposit. Now this is only true if you deposit in a currency other than USD. Otherwise no fx fee apply. I confirm that you donāt pay any fee at all when buying/selling shares of SMT. You can always open an account and try with virtual money and check for yourself.
I donāt know how it works for UK investors, but for non-UK we have to pay the stamp duty on UK stocks. On eToro you donāt.
For UK Investors, I fail to understand why would anyone want to trade UK stock priced in GBX on eToro when you still have your T212 account ? Is it not better to keep using T212 for this UK stock trading as there is no conversion as it is priced in GBX/GBP and you could wrap it under S&S ISA Account. Whether there is stamp duty as one would expect for UK share on eToro, I do not know. But in T212 you still need to pay a stamp duty for UK stock.
I am aware that stamp duty of 0.5% with T212 might be higher than eToro conversion fee. But the ability to wrap it under ISA on T212 will make a real difference. The exception of course if you can not have a S&S ISA account.
Also because the stock are priced in GBX there must be having a conversion fee back from GBX to US$ as your account on eToro is in US$ when you sell or liquidate your position . Double conversion fees is likely to be higher than 0.5% compared to stamp duty you would have paid using T212 or have I missed something here ??
@adindas is right about eTore fx fees exceeding the cost of stamp duty. eToro say on their web site that they charge 50 pips for conversion between USD and GBP. So presumably you pay this every time you use the USD in your eToro account to buy or sell a GBP denominated investment like SMT. 50 pips means that if 1 GBP costs 1.3850 USD spot rate, then eToro will charge you 1.3900. This is a markup of 0.36%, which is more than twice the 0.15% that Trading 212 will impose. I think this explains how eToro can fund the payment of 0.5% stamp duty. They are making 0.72% on the round trip fx fees, and more if your investment increases in value by the time you sell.
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Is this possible though?
Someone already mentioned it isnāt allowed in an ISA.
Perhaps with Invest account though? This would potentially be worth it if you trade US markets only with high-frequency. You would only have to pay currency conversion once on deposit and once more on withdrawals.
If you are constantly trimming and scalping positions it doesnāt make much sense to pay currency conversion fees on every trade (even if small). Those .15% will add up quickly over many trades and erode gains.
I bought my BTC and ETH positions in small chunks on eToro. The platform keeps each of these positions separate, so you can see the P/L of each position; the P/L across all the positions for a single instrument; and the overall portfolio P/L. I like this approach, which is similar to CFDs on Trading 212.
However, when I learned that you can earn interest on crypto, I decided to move my crypto from eToro to a platform such as yearn.finance, BlockFi or nexo. In order to move crypto from eToro, you need to first transfer it to the eToro wallet. There is a flat fee for doing this and it is charged at the position level.
The fee for BTC is 0.0005 BTC (currently about $30) and for ETH itās 0.006 ETH (currently about $11). Iād been building my holdings using the recommended Dollar-Cost-Averaging approach, so I had dozens of positions. Therefore, in order to move all my BTC and ETH internally from the eToro trading platform to the eToro wallet, I had to pay over $1500! As it is a flat fee, I wouldāve had to pay this whether my positions were worth $1 or a $1,000,000 (hint: it was closer to the former!).
I contacted eToro to suggest that these fees were unreasonable, but they were unsympathetic.
Of course, I then had to pay the usual network fees to move my BTC and ETH from the eToro wallet to their final destination, but at least this only applied once per instrument so they were far less damaging to my returns.
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I use Coinbase Pro and Binance now, but Iām no expert.
Thatās 2 votes for Coinbase Pro. Iām hoping some other crypto experts chip in, so I can learn something too!
ISAs are only GBP. So the ISA owners will have always to pay the FX fees on non-GBP stocks.
UK investors have to choose between the tax-free or fee-free.
Tax-wrapper (GBP account-only with FX fees) vs. Invest (USD account without FX fees).
Not entirely true, Iāve looked at eToro and the main fees are as follows:
50pips FX fee upon deposit/withdrawal when using other currency than USD (if deposit USD directly no FX fee, for some currencies other rates apply). Once within the platform, no FX fees are charged nor any stamp duty or french transaction tax. FX fees are only charged again upon withdrawal to a non USD account.
A withdrawal fee is charged ($5) and upon a year of inactivity an inactivity fee is also charged ($10 a month). Especially the latter could be very damaging to people.
But aside from those fees eToro is a bit dubious in regard to other things:
- not accepting Revolut withdrawal (read that deposit is accepted, thus leaving money stuck) because itās mainly used to avoid FX fee.
- Blurry line between CFD and normal shares
- Very bad customer support
- With high volatility platform also doesnāt seem to hold up or trading certain instruments was restricted (mostly from GME stuff, but still relevant to note)
On the blurry line between CFD and normal shares:
- Sell vs Close mainly with sell opening a CFD short trade instead of selling your actual shares, for that close position needs to be used. Very misleading!
- Levrage factor can easily be left at another number thus opening CFD trades instead of buying regular shares
Examples from google:
I donāt have an account at eToro (although if they would fully accept revolut it could be a cheaper option for me than T212) so this is all from eToro website, reddit users, google and not from personal experience
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First off, let me clarify that I am not trying to promote eToro. When searching for a broker that would satisfy my need I considered many including eToro and my final choice was T212. At present I have 99% of my investment in T212. For now I plan to hold my T212 account and frankly I would be happy to keep it that way. However, with this FX fee in place things change, specially for someone with my trading style. For example I like to add to my current positions everytime thereās weakness in the stocks I hold, so that means frequent buys.
Now with that said, let me clarify that I have myself opened an eToro account and funded it with small amount just to test. I made a first deposit via iDeal in EUR and yes I confirm you pay the 0.5% FX fee. I made a second deposit with Revolut in USD and I confirm you donāt pay any FX fee. So currently I have both payment methods available in my account. I also read that people reported issues when withdrawal back to their Revolut accounts. Yet something to be tested. Anyway I assume I can always withdraw back to my main bank account without issues.
Finally, regarding buying UK stocks, I bought 4 shares of SMT and I confirm no FX fee nor stamp duty was charged!
Again, this is big deal!
Moreover, I also noticed that spreads and execution times were better on eToro. Yes I had both eToro and T212 side by side while trading.
I seriously hope T212 considers carefully their competition and think of offering something that would minimize the impact of the FX fee.
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Sell is short selling the asset you donāt actually have.
OK 
so what is your point.
Do you want to try them or just be on the sidelines and make comments?
Point was mainly pointing out that there is no FX fee in eToro for trading, only going in and out.
When the FX fee was introduced here I actively looked for cheaper brokers, but as eToro doesnāt fully accept Revolut, and there doesnāt seem to be any other credible service with 0% fx conversion, it seemed too expensive.
If eToro would remove its 50pips fx fee or fully accept Revolut I would move at least all my foreign currency investments over there. So yes I would want to try them if they become cheaper.
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Iām definitely not an expert but use Binance over coinbase pro. The fees are cheaper and there is a greater selection of coins to buy.
And using a (Transfer)Wise USD account? 
EDIT:
Quick search (Not a bank wire from an USD TW account) :
https://www.etoro.com/people/akecir
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