After eToro has terminated my account for no reason whatsoever, I had to look for a new platform to use for my stock investments. Having done a decent amount of research into the possible solutions out there, I came to the conclusions that Interactive Brokers will be my next home for everything related to stocks.
Time to go professional
While I enjoyed eToro for its ease of use, selection of assets to invest in, and overall user experience, it was not the professional platform that one would use after so many years of investing, not to mention the surprise account termination that I got to experience first hand.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR) on the other hand, is a tool for another level of investors, that I would call semi-pro. Even though IBKR can be set up to be suitable for institutional grade investors, the basic target demo is probably the investors who are not rookies in the game and would enjoy some pro-level features in their investment management.
That being said, using IBKR is not difficult. The learning curve is a bit steeper than the one of RobinHood or eToro, but it is worth spending time with understanding how things operate. The first thing that comes as a massive difference is the dedicated desktop app, which is basically a trading terminal. It supports multi-monitor setups for those who prefer this option, allowing a fully immersive stock market setup for analysis.
The other difference is the selection of assets. There is hardly any stock in the world that could not be found on IBKR in some shape or form. Apart from stocks, there are of course possibilities to invest in ETFs, trade FOREX, CFDs, etc, but these are not interesting for me at the moment.
Lucky timing
I was extremely lucky to have my eToro account terminated at the top of the local bull cycle of the NASDAQ. My portfolio has always been tech-heavy, with most of my holdings being well in profit with amazing entries, which I would not have sold for profit easily.
Thanks to the unfortunate closure of my account, I was basically forced to take profit on all of my positions held. It just so happened that by the time I found IBKR, the market dipped enough for me to get back in the game at lower prices compared to my liquidation levels at eToro.
With this fortunate turn of events, I managed to pull a “sell high, buy low” stunt, something which I would not really do otherwise.
Plans with stocks
With the stocks I hold at IBKR, I don’t plan to sell anytime soon. When I say anytime soon, I mean I will be holding for at 5 years, possibly more. The assets I invest in are all long term buys, where I see a potential for major value increases in the future.
I am interested in stocks related to space technology, blockchain, aviation, new age tech, and mobility. I try to diversify in terms of geography, I have shares in US companies predominantly, but I also hold some from Europe, and have some Asians on my watchlist.
I try to keep my stock portfolio well maintained with dollar-cost-averaging into positions which turn red. The idea is to have a comfortable average entry price for assets that I plan to hold for the long term.