eToro OpenBook

OpenBook was eToro's social investment network, launched in 2010, and the product that made copy trading a mainstream retail category. It presented other users' portfolios, positions and performance as a feed, and let a user allocate capital to follow one of them automatically.

Current status

The OpenBook name is retired. Its functions were folded into the single eToro platform, where CopyTrader is the feature that allocates a share of your capital to mirror another user, and the social feed sits alongside the instrument pages. Nothing was lost; the separate product simply stopped being separate. Broker listings still carrying the name are showing content from over a decade ago.

What the model actually is

Understanding the structure matters more than the branding, and it has not changed:

• You allocate a fixed sum to copy a trader. Their positions are opened proportionally in your account, sized to your allocation.
• You can stop copying at any time, which closes the copied positions at market.
• The copied trader is paid by the platform under its popular-investor programme, not by you directly — but the platform's own spreads and fees apply to every copied trade, and that cost is what a thin edge dies on.

What to check before copying anyone

• Length of record. Under a year across varied conditions is noise, however good the number.
• Drawdown, not returns. Look at the worst peak-to-trough period and ask whether you would have held through it. Most people who stop copying do so at the bottom.
• Position sizing after losses. Size that increases into a loss is martingale behaviour, and it produces a beautiful curve until it produces a catastrophe.
• What they actually trade. A record built on one crypto bull run tells you nothing about the next market.

The point

Copying transfers the decisions, not the risk. The account is yours, the loss is yours, and the only genuine control you keep is choosing who to follow and when to stop.