Copytrading, a New Phenomenon: Comparative Economic and Legal Overview

The author focuses on the new phenomenon of copytrading, starting from a thorough knowledge of online financial trading tools. As more and more individuals have ventured into the online trade of financial instruments through new technologies and the Internet, trading has become accessible to anyone. It will be shown that operating within financial markets is not easy in the light of a series of economic techniques developed by experts in the field. This paper aims to provide an overview of the evolution of markets and therefore how the advent of the Internet and the creation of an extremely connected society is influencing the world of the stock exchange, changing actors and methods. It will especially explore the role and weight of today’s social networks in the financial markets and how, through their integration in stock exchange environments, a new trading system has developed that is increasingly open to all kinds of "investors" – recalling, for example, some start-ups engaged in a real process of "democratizing finance", thanks to their low costs and easy accessibility, like eToro. On one hand, the paper’s objective is the interdisciplinary nature of this phenomenon: economic profiles which explain its functioning and the legal consequences it generates, imposing organic regulation. The other objective relates to inexperienced traders being able to make investment choices with diligence and conscience; the paper will outline some traits of the regulatory regulation of online trading with a view to a comparison between the Italian and Bulgarian systems.