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Stephen Bliss flips burgers during the day at his Redcar roadside cafe - and manages a £9m online trading fund by night.

The 34-year-old has become one of the top traders on worldwide social trading platform eToro, and says anyone can get into trading by watching how others do it.

Now he wants to swap fry-ups at The Sizzling Griddle off the A174 for full-time stocks and shares, after his expected earnings hit well into six figures this year.

And it all started as a hobby with pretend money.

“You can open practice accounts and trade with virtual currency. I didn’t want to start throwing real money at it and end up losing it all,” said Stephen.

(Image: Ian Cooper)

“About two years in, I got the hang of it and started feeling confident. I put some real money in, about £3,000 and lost about half of it.

“They say never trade with money you can’t afford to lose but losing that was a bit of a blow.

“After that, I went back to a virtual account and saved up more cash.

“You find, when you transition to trading properly, your mentality changes and it affects the way you trade.

“You’ll take positions that are in profit too quickly, when they start going the wrong way you tend to hold it longer,

“You have to take all emotions out of it.

“It was a big learning curve.”

Here are Stephen's trading tips • You HAVE to become emotionless. • Educate yourself first - “you have to know what you are doing and what you’re investing in, how to read the charts - technical analysis,” Stephen says. • It’s definitely not something you can just jump into. That’s why etoro is good, someone that doesn’t know what they are doing can invest money into other people.

Etoro is “a little bit like Facebook”, says Stephen, where you can interact with other traders, invest money in the top traders - and then sit back.

Stephen is now in the top few traders out of 10 million users, managing a $12.75m (£9m) fund.

He added: “I’ve got about 6,600 people investing their money in me.

“I don’t let it affect me now. But when I first reached $1m I thought ‘wow’.

“I’m bombarded with people’s queries, it’s every minute; responding takes up a lot of time, but we were asked to go to London and a Q&A live stream which helps.

“I enjoy making money for other people. A guy messaged me saying he invested £60,000, I got it up to £200,000 and he messaged me to say he’s just gone on a trip around Malaysia with his mates on a Harley Davidson and wanted to thank me.”

(Image: Ian Cooper)

The commission Stephen has earned from the site amounts to six figures this year.

“I really enjoy learning about it, the returns are far greater than what you get from putting money in a bank account.

"Every year has been positive, I’ve returned 935% this year which is significant, but I don’t expect to do that every year. My target is 5%, which is a bit more realistic.

“Now I want to step back from the catering business and focus on the trading full-time.

“We get our regulars; a few have even invested so they pop in and we chat about it; it’s amazing how many people are starting to do it.”