Etrade Editor Review

Free Stock Trading with Etrade

E*TRADE is one of the most popular online brokerage firms in both regular trading community as well as beginners. However if you are somewhere in between we would not highly recommend it. It has great customer service which is absolutely essential for beginners and really great rate if you a regular investor.This editor review is going to illustrate some of the reasons that make E*TRADE a leading brokerage firms for both active and new investors.

Both the regular investors and the young traders will find their service user–friendly, educational and containing the advanced tools needed to create profitable investment strategies. It provides multiple options and can fulfill all your trading needs. You get to trade stocks, bonds, options and mutual funds. You are able to set floor as well target prices at which you want to buy and sell your trades. There is a tremendous amount of information on the top stocks of the day and various news around the stock. A great feature of the brokerage firm are the E*TRADE specific index funds that codme with no fee and no load.

The community and chat parts of E*TRADE website are not that useful. Not too many people use these features. From experience those chat rooms and communities are more or less useless everywhere anyway.

E-Trade has received top awards, and is obviously highly regarded by the financial press. So right off the bat, they’ve got a good reputation if you’re going to base it on what publications are saying:

1. Smart Money (WSJ Magazine) rated them as #1 Online Broker in 2007 and 2008.
   • 5 Stars for Trading Tools, Mutual Funds and Investing Products, Banking Services
   • 4 Stars for Customer Service, Research
2. Barron’s gave them 4 out of 5 stars in 2008 and recognizes them as part of the Top 10 in the 2008 Online Brokers Survey.
3. As an aside, Money Magazine pegged them as one of the Best of the Breed for their online banking arm.

E*TRADE Standout Features:

• A great feature of the brokerage firm are the Etrade specific index funds that come with no fee and no load.
• Execution times are among the best in the business.
• One thing that I like a lot is that E-trade doesn't get on my back regarding margin requirements. Other sites might be a little quicker to ask you to liquidate or put more money in but Etrade has been very good with that. In fact that is one reason i won't switch to any other broker.

Investments Offered:

Apart from the regular stocks, bonds, options and mutual funds trading. Etrade offers Etrade specific index funds that come with no fee and no load.

After-hours trading is tricky. since there is no market makers after the closing the volume shrinks up and the only way to make a trade is by matching the buyers and sellers electronically. Because of this they have made it a rule to not have any odd lots that means you can only trade 100 or 200 shares at a time.

E-trade has successfully integrated other companies products and services into their sites. You can get discounts on a lot of things for becoming an Etrade customer including frequent flyer miles and PCs, credit cards

History:

In 1982, William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb founded PicoTrade Inc. in Palo Alto, California. In 1991, Porter founded a new company, E-Trade Securities, Inc., with several hundred thousand dollars of startup capital from PicoTrade. E-Trade offered its trading services via America Online and Compuserve. In 1994, its revenues neared $11 million (up from $850,000 in 1992). It later reorganized and emerged under the name E-Trade Group, with E-Trade Securities as its principal subsidiary.

In August 1996, it went public with Robertson, Stephens & Company as the lead underwriter. In 2003, the company changed its name from E-Trade Group Inc. to E*TRADE Financial Corporation.

In 2003, the Toronto-Dominion Bank held talks to merge its TD Waterhouse discount brokerage with E*TRADE, but the two sides could not come to an agreement over control of the merged entity.[5][6] In 2005, E*TRADE made an unsolicited offer for Ameritrade, currently the second largest US discount broker. Ameritrade instead purchased TD Waterhouse, with TD Bank holding a 39% stake in the new entity.

In August 2005, E*TRADE Financial acquired Harrisdirect, formerly a discount brokerage service of Bank of Montreal. Two months later, E*Trade acquired BrownCo, formerly a discount brokerage service of J.P. Morgan for 1.6 billion in cash.

Following are some screenshots from E*TRADE GUI

Homepage of Etrade: Allows you easy access to your multiple accounts

You can easily trade different types of trade

Graphic details are provided of your portfolio performance which helps you to make the right decisions.

For Details on Free Stock Trading Offer from Etrade, please follow following link:

Free Stock Trading with Etrade