How he turned his passion into 20m dollar

Every day, traders all over the world face the challenge of navigating the increasingly complex and unpredictable financial markets. The path to profitability can often be lonely and incredibly time-consuming. Many have turned to social trading networks and copied the strategies of leading traders within the community to enhance their own performance.

These platforms produce thousands of success stories from unknown traders who become masters of their craft. One such story is Wes Nolte, a 30-something South African-born chief technology officer based in London.

Wes (known by his eToro username ‘Wesl3y’) joined eToro in 2015. Through his diverse, risk-balanced, and bodacious trading style, he earned himself a position as a Popular Investor (PI) within just 2 years. PI is a program that allows top traders, such as Wes, to build their own financial business and earn a 2% management fee.

Secret to success
Wes’s secret comes from a personal interest in studying economics and human behavior.

“I read a lot on sociology and psychology out of pure interest. I also read a lot on macro and microeconomics, and I’ve found that economics is simply the study of human behavior via the proxy of “perceived value,” e.g. fiat currencies, stock. Once you’ve learnt this, and understand more about people (especially group-mentality) you become a significantly better trader – although you still need to couple this with a good deal of patience. For example, almost all positive and negative events that affect an asset are overplayed, either overbought or oversold. And big events e.g. an exchange is hacked, or a president makes an aggressive statement, become very good trading opportunities.”

When he was asked what drew him to eToro, he said he was “curious about how a social network built around trading might work; because of the ease and speed of trading; the great user interface; the fact that it’s secure; plus the knowledge I can draw from and give to the community.”

As someone with 17 years trading experience, Wes was also interested in the PI program, and how it enables top traders to earn a second income.

Wesly Nolte
Crypto Trading
Cryptocurrencies became a very intriguing asset class for Wes. Beyond their trading profitability, he views crypto as a great tool to potentially “flatten the hierarchies that our society and culture, and so on, are built upon.”

Asked how he first discovered crypto, he said, “I first heard about bitcoin in 2010 when the price started jumping up from a few cents to dollars, and myself and friends were wondering what the hell was going on. I was skeptical and also quite poor, so I didn’t pick any up. Roll on 2013 and bitcoin is still doing its thang, and a few other cryptos had emerged. I decided to get in and bought some XRP and bitcoin, and built a mining rig to mine more bitcoin and a few million Dogecoins.”

Like most people, he also has his share of regrets during the December/January Bull Run.

“It felt like an enormous melt-up, and I dumped a lot of crypto fairly early in the rise. It hurt to watch it continuing up but less so once I saw it crash. I did buy back in after the second or third sell-off, so I got in too early, but at least prices were way off their highs.”

Despite the uniqueness of crypto, Wes acknowledges that “the market has been tough across the board this year” for all asset classes, including stocks, commodities, currencies, and cryptocurrencies.

Trading Bots
As more amateur traders enter the crypto markets, the presence of trading bots has increased significantly. Yet Wes doesn’t believe that bots are currently much use for trading cryptocurrencies.

“I don’t think crypto trading bots are useful, yet. Three major reasons: first, the technology isn’t advanced enough yet. Second, spreads and fees on cryptos are still fairly high compared to traditional markets. Third, there isn’t enough history or market activity for them to learn from. I also believe this will change over time, espe