{"id":374,"date":"2025-02-23T14:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T14:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/?p=374"},"modified":"2025-02-23T15:11:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T15:11:49","slug":"etoro-terminated-my-account-without-a-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/?p=374","title":{"rendered":"eToro terminated my account without a reason"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You read that right. After 9 years of service, eToro suddenly decided to terminate my account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My stock investment portfolio was maintained on eToro, a platform where I have been a fully verified member since 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple days ago, I got a notification from the customer service team that according to their terms and conditions, they will close my account. The following day, it\u2019s exactly what happened. All my positions got closed, without any reason given whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, February 20, 2025 marks the date when eToro lost me as a client and forced me to look for an alternative platform to invest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Timeline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To reconstruct the events, let\u2019s see the timeline of what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned above, I have been a registered, verified and KYC-d user of eToro since 2017. All my documents have always been submitted and updated in due time, whenever it was requested by the platform. I am not a politically exposed person, I don\u2019t take risky trades, the source of the invested funds is my own salary that I earn, and nothing else. I am possibly the least risky user there is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting from 2021, I only held and owned nothing but stocks, I have become a boring investor, with a decently increasing portfolio value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023 I started to take investment seriously, and by 2025, my PNL has reached over 70% in gains. I had about $2500 invested, and my balance was around $4200. I have no idea why my account would be so bad that they have to close it by force. Yet, that\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

February 19<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On February 19, I got the notorious e-mail, which said the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Upon further review of your account, and in accordance with our applicable Terms and Conditions we are no longer able to offer you our services and must proceed with closing your account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This may have resulted due to either not receiving the requested documentation within our permitted timeframes and therefore we are unable to conclude our review as part of our regulatory and internal due diligence process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively the closure can result due to following an extensive review by our operations department we\u2019ve concluded that we are not able to provide you with our services and unfortunately, we cannot provide the reason for the closure of the account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means we will have to proceed with the closure of your eToro investment account and all subsequent services offered by eToro such as the eToro Money digital account and crypto wallet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would like to clarify that your account is currently limited from depositing, opening new trades, or performing withdrawals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ll return your remaining balance to one of your previously used payment methods. If none of them are valid, we will contact you to request details of an alternative payment method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All subsequent services associated with the account such as the eToro Money digital account and crypto wallet will also be limited from further use during this period and are also subject to closure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aforementioned closure process will take up to 2 business days during which any remaining open positions will be closed and the remaining funds will be returned back to your payment method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Best Regards ,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 eToro Customer Service<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After they sent me this e-mail, I checked the platform to see if there is anything missing from my documents. My profile shows everything is perfectly fine. There was a notification that popped up about a W-8BEN form that I needed to sign, which I did immediately. Everything seemed to be just fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

February 20<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The following day, after US market open, I noticed all my positions started to get closed by force. Apparently, eToro is not messing around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One after the other, position closure popups started to fill my screen. I was just there staring at my device, realizing that this is really happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking that it must be a mistake, I reached out to customer service. The communication style was nice and friendly, but essentially what they said was: yeah, sorry, it wasn\u2019t us, it was the operations team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess there is nothing left to do. Even if eToro came back to me saying sorry it was a mistake, we are sorry, it\u2019s too late. I mean this type of operation is simply unacceptable when it comes to investing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

February 21<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not having received any confirmation about the payment channel they will refund my money, I decided to withdraw everything immediately via bank transfer. The payout was quick and effective, I got all my funds back, minus $5 withdrawal fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interactive Brokers<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it was the right thing to happen after all. I loved eToro, it was my go to platform for easy investing and holding for many years. However, they made me realize that they are just not reliable enough to be considered for serious investments. The forced closure of my positions was not something I was happy about, that is obvious. However, the only good thing about it is that it happened when the markets were green. The next days there was a massive selloff all over the board, so even if some of my positions were still waiting to turn profitable, at least the cutoff did not happen on a deep red day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also realized that it is probably time to step my game up when it comes to stocks, and look for something more professional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After some consideration, I found Interactive Brokers to be my platform of choice. I have initiated the deposit; it is now in the clearing process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will try to rebuild my stock portfolio, maybe even rebalance it a little bit. I hope that IB will be much more professional when it comes to dealing with KYC and AML procedures, and I will have no more surprises like I had with eToro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Alright, this was my emergency update about my stock investment journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me know in the comment section if you had any similar experience with either eToro, or anything negative about Interactive Brokers, I would love to know if I am the only one in this situation or it\u2019s something more general. See you soon, pigmoney out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You read that right. After 9 years of service, eToro suddenly decided to terminate my account. My stock investment portfolio was maintained on eToro, a platform where I have been a fully verified member since 2017. A couple days ago, I got a notification from the customer service team that according to their terms and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[38,39],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stocks","tag-etoro","tag-stocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigmoney.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}