eToro Pro Investor Summit 2026: three days in Cyprus, the same process

I spent three days in Limassol, Cyprus, at the eToro Pro Investor Summit 2026. It ran from 3 to 5 November at the Grand Resort and brought together Popular Investors from all over the world. I attended at eToro’s invitation.

I came home with notes, new contacts and some sharper questions. I also came home with one certainty I want to share with everyone who follows me: the Santiago1000 process isn’t changing. What’s changing is the desk around it.

From the outside, an event like this can look like a string of presentations and photos. For anyone copying me, the question that matters is different: what does it add to the work I do every day?

One line in the welcome letter

At every seat there was a welcome letter from Sam Rudnick, Head of Investment Programs at eToro. One line stayed with me: “The strategy was never the scarce part. The desk was — and now it’s yours.”

For decades, data, risk management and disciplined execution belonged to institutional desks. The three days revolved around one idea: those capabilities are now within reach of an individual investor.

1. The desk grows

The session that stuck with me most was called “One person. An institutional-grade desk.” One slide showed four “chiefs” run by artificial intelligence (AI) agents: one for investing, one for communication, one for growth and a chief of staff. The investor sat in the middle, as supervisor. The rule came at the end: the agent acts, a guardrail checks it, errors get flagged, and the investor decides.

The rest of the programme pointed the same way. eToro founder and CEO Yoni Assia sat down on stage with Nick Miller from SpaceXAI. As an investor, my job is to connect that ambition to the reality of companies: the investment required, the execution and the cash they generate. There were workshops on building tools with Grok, improving your profile with Base44 and using eToro’s connectors. In the Base44 session, an investor showed how he went from a spreadsheet to a website in a day or two, with no prior experience, and kept improving it for months.

Back home, I started testing a small team of AI assistants on a virtual account. One coordinates, one prepares the portfolio data, one watches the risk limits and one reads the news. They analyse and prepare. The decisions, the orders and the posts are still mine. A convincing answer still needs checking, and a summary can leave out the decisive detail. So I’ll judge these tools with three questions: do they help me find relevant information? Do they make comparisons more consistent? Do they let me track risk better? I’ll share what I learn when there are results worth showing.

2. The process stays

In one session, Neomi Ramot and Shani Blackman, from eToro’s client relationship team, summed up what successful Pro Investors have in common. They come from different backgrounds and have different styles, but they share six traits:

• a clear strategy;
• strong, steady stats;
• education and growth;
• consistency;
• community;
• trust.

I went through Santiago1000 against that list. The strategy is global, in stocks and ETFs chosen for quality, growth, valuation and momentum, and it’s organised in five layers. Stability comes from the rules: no leverage, no short selling, a 7% cap per position and a weekly review done the same way every time. Education lives in my letters and articles, where I explain what I buy, what I trim and why.

Consistency was tested that very week. Between 30 October and 6 November, the S&P 500 fell 2.7% (measured by the SPY ETF, using eToro data), and AI-related stocks fell a good deal more. The process didn’t change with the market’s mood. That’s what it’s there for.

3. People matter

The best part of the summit was the people. There were chats in the corridors, over coffee and at the gala dinner, with investors from very different backgrounds and the same curiosity. Thank you to Yoni Assia and the whole eToro team for the invitation and for looking after us so well.

Every investor brings a different risk tolerance and a different way of reading information. A well-founded conviction should stand up to different views, and when the facts change, I need to be ready to revise the conclusion.

The last conversation happened on the plane. On the flight home, between Larnaca and London, I found myself next to Jay Smith (@JayNemesis on eToro), a fellow Popular Investor whose analysis I admire. We spent most of the flight talking about investment theses. Afterwards I sent him the Twin Momentum paper I’d mentioned. Some coincidences are worth the trip.

What changes for my copiers

Behind every copy is someone with goals and money at risk. That trust shapes how I analyse, decide and communicate, especially when markets get tough.

Nothing in the process: the same rules, the same position cap and the same weekly review. What I bring back are better questions. I’ll share them here when they justify a change, always with the reasoning.

If you’d like to see the method and the numbers, the Results and Risk page shows return, risk and portfolio composition, updated every month. You can also view my profile on eToro to check the stats, risk score and holdings, and decide whether this approach suits you.

The photos keep the trip. The work that starts now is what carries it forward.

Disclosure: I attended the eToro Pro Investor Summit 2026 at eToro’s invitation. I’m a Popular Investor on eToro, and this article contains an eToro Partners affiliate link. This is not investment advice. Copy trading involves risk, including loss of capital, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.