How to Copy a US Large-Cap Portfolio That Has Outperformed the S&P 500

Watch: How to Copy a Portfolio That's Beaten the S&P 500

A short video deep dive on this topic. Prefer to read? The full post is below.

What copying actually does in your account

When you choose to copy AlphaWizzard, eToro replicates our trades proportionally into your own account. Our portfolio holds between 15 and 30 US large-cap stocks, each at the same size. Your copy holds the same names, scaled to the amount you allocated.

The money never leaves your account. Veloris Capital is a Pro Investor on eToro, a role previously called Popular Investor. We do not manage anyone's capital and we have no access to yours. The replication is technical and automatic, and it runs inside your own account at your own responsibility.

The minimum to copy AlphaWizzard is $1,500. That number comes from how replication behaves at small amounts. Our equity exposure moves with market risk, so the invested part can fall well below the full amount. At $1,500 each position stays large enough for eToro to replicate it accurately, even when exposure is low.

What copying costs you

We charge nothing. There is no management fee, no performance fee, no subscription and no copy-trade fee. eToro runs its own cost structure, and that part is worth reading before you start.

The spread is the only cost that touches every trade. Its effect on a portfolio like ours stays small, because we do not trade often. Holdings re-qualify once a month, so a position typically turns over at that rebalance rather than daily. A high-frequency strategy pays that cost many times more often than we do.

We hold unleveraged stock only, so overnight fees do not apply. Your eToro account is denominated in USD, so funding it in another currency adds a conversion cost and some currency risk.

How eToro pays a Pro Investor

eToro runs the Pro Investor Program, previously called the Popular Investor Program. It has four levels, and each one asks for more assets under copy, more of the investor's own capital, and more copiers. From Elite level upward, eToro also requires a recognised investment-management qualification.

AlphaWizzard sits at Champion level, which carries no qualification requirement. eToro calls what it asks for higher up an Investment Management Qualification. Ronny holds one of the certificates on that accepted list: the CISI Level 3 International Certificate in Wealth and Investment Management. It is regulated by Ofqual in the United Kingdom and meets the European qualification standard for investment advisers.

Holding that certificate is not the same as being licensed to advise. Veloris Capital is not a licensed asset manager or investment adviser, and nothing we publish is individual advice. You can see our level and our full history on the public profile at any time.

Elite is the next level up. Its headline requirements are $400,000 in assets under copy, at least ten copiers, and that qualification. The eToro profile shows around 30 copiers, and it publishes our assets under copy as a band, currently $300K to $1M.

eToro pays its Pro Investors 1.5% a year of average assets under copy, out of its own revenue, monthly. At Champion level that payment carries a floor and a ceiling. We earn on capital that stays copied. We earn nothing from your trading activity, and when the account falls the assets under copy fall with it, so the payment falls too. We also invest our own capital in the same strategy.

Five checks before you copy anyone

Everything above works the same way for every investor on the platform. What differs is who you choose. These are the five checks we would run, and each one can be answered from a public eToro profile in a few minutes.

How long is the record?

A profile shows performance by year and by month. A record that only covers a rising market has not yet been tested by a falling one. A short record is not disqualifying, as long as you read it as short.

How deep was the worst fall?

Maximum drawdown tells you what you would have had to sit through. Read it next to the return over the same window. A deep fall that bought a high return is a different result from a deep fall while lagging.

What does it actually hold?

Open the portfolio and look. Stocks, currencies, crypto and leveraged positions behave very differently in a decline. A portfolio you understand is one you are more likely to hold through a bad month.

How concentrated is it?

Count the positions and look at their relative sizes. A book of five names behaves differently from one of twenty-five. Neither is wrong, and the point is knowing which one you are copying.

Are the bad months explained?

eToro requires every Pro Investor to publish at least one post a month. Read what an investor wrote after their worst month rather than after their best one.

How AlphaWizzard looks against those five

Here is our own record against the same checklist, starting with the two numbers that belong side by side.

The year-to-date figure is the one published on our eToro profile, so you can check it there yourself. The other two lines are our own calculation, because eToro does not publish a since-inception return or a drawdown figure. Where eToro publishes a number, we show eToro's number. All figures are as of 19 September 2026.

One line in that table is a test result rather than a live one. The risk overlay was built and validated on market data covering the 2008 crisis onward, then walk-forward validated from 2019. That is research, not account history. The live record starts in November 2025 and is the shorter of the two.

The live record being under a year old matters. It covers one market environment. Read it as a start rather than as evidence across market cycles.

The worst fall was deeper than the index, at -19.1% against -9.1%. Read it next to the return over the same window, where the account finished 13.3 percentage points ahead of the S&P 500 since inception. A drawdown figure on its own does not tell you whether you were compensated for taking it.

Our goal is to outperform the S&P 500 over the long term, meaning 12 months and beyond. A portfolio of 15 to 30 stocks falls harder than the index in a sharp pullback, and that is the trade-off we accept. The risk overlay reduces exposure as conditions deteriorate, and an initial hit before it adapts is normal. We aim for a smaller fall in deeper and longer declines, and we cannot promise it, because every correction is different.

July 2026 produced most of that fall, at -12.7% in a single month. The portfolio that entered July was concentrated in one theme, and the official sector labels did not reveal it. We changed the selection rules in response, adding a limit on how many holdings may come from one correlation cluster. How the Optimizer Limits Concentration sets out what those limits do and what they do not do. The month itself is covered in Monthly Review: July 2026.

Which names we hold is decided by systematic screens rather than by opinion, and every holding has to re-qualify at the monthly rebalance. The Optimizer decides which qualified names to hold, not how big each position should be. Three pillars run the process: Stock Universe, then Optimizer, then Risk Overlay.

Where the risk overlay fits

Every night, the system recalculates more than 20 risk indicators across markets and sets our equity exposure for the next day. It does not forecast prices and it does not claim to know where the market goes next. It is built to control drawdown across the whole portfolio during broad market declines.

That also marks the limit of what it does. It reads market-wide signals, so it does not protect a single holding that falls on its own while the broader market stays healthy. Two other things carry that risk. Every position is equal-weight, and every name has to re-qualify at the next rebalance.

The widget below shows the current reading from our live exposure log.

Whether you qualify to copy

Some readers will click copy and see the message "You don't qualify for this Copy investment". That is not a fault with the link or with the strategy. eToro asks every user about their knowledge, experience, objectives and risk tolerance, and builds an investor profile from the answers.

Those questions sit under Settings, then Verification Centre, then Experience and Objectives. Your answers there determine which products and Copy Investments eToro makes available to you. Answer every question accurately and truthfully, based on your own circumstances.

We cannot tell you which answers to give, and we will not. The appropriateness assessment exists to keep people out of products that do not fit their situation. Some readers will correctly not qualify for a concentrated equity strategy, and in that case the gate is protecting them. Our walkthrough of where those settings live is in the FAQ.

You stay in control

Copying starts and stops with one action inside your own account. You can raise the amount, lower it, pause, or stop entirely, with no lock-up and no exit fee from us. You can also trade other instruments alongside a copied position, because the two run separately. More detail on where the money sits is in the FAQ.

How to start

Three steps. The setup takes about ten minutes, plus however long eToro needs to verify your identity.

• Open an account. Create your eToro account and complete the identity verification.
• Find the strategy. Search for AlphaWizzard on the platform, or go straight to our profile.
• Set your amount and copy. From $1,500 upward. You can change the amount or stop at any time.

If the copy button tells you that you do not qualify, the section above explains where your investor profile lives and why the answers matter.

“Judge the worst fall and the return it bought together. Either number on its own tells you half the story.”

Related reading. The most recent numbers sit in Monthly Review: August 2026. What the portfolio deliberately leaves out is covered in Why We Don't Short, Buy Crypto, or Use Leverage. How sector labels can hide what a portfolio really holds is covered in Sector Rotation: Are We an AI Portfolio?.

Past performance is not an indication of future results. Your capital is at risk. This article is provided for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice and is not guidance on how to answer suitability or appropriateness questions. Always answer all questions accurately and truthfully, based on your own circumstances. Performance figures are as of 19 September 2026 and cover the period since inception on 1 November 2025.

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