online brokerage

TD Ameritrade Holding plans to discuss the possibility to purchase its rival online brokerage company E*Trade Financial Corp, according to the Wall Street Journal, who cited sources with the knowledge of the matter.

The Journal notes that the probable talks would not necessarily involve the offer from TD Ameritrade for E*Trade.

E*Trade Financial's largest shareholder, Citadel LLC, last week pressed the online brokerage to consider a sale of its business.
 

Charles Schwab, a discount brokerage company, plans to launch a new service to allow customers to invest directly in foreign stock markets using local currencies.

Related services are already offered by other brokerages including E*Trade, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade and Zecco.

"The U.S. is becoming less important with the overall asset mix people are thinking about," says Schwab's Brian McDonald. Investors are "looking to grow global trading, and we want to make sure we're right there with them."

Citadel is selling about 24 million shares in the US online brokerage company E*Trade Corp which sent E*Trade’s shares down 5.9%.

A Citadel investment Group affiliate launched an underwritten offering, set to close March 1, that would reduce the Chicago-based fund's stake to about 18 percent of E*Trade, from about 27 percent currently, according to a regulatory filing late on Wednesday.

Previously Citadel already reduced its 50% stake in E*Trade. Now the move sent shares of E*Trade Financial Corp (ETFC.O) down 98 cents to $15.67 -- its lowest level in a month.

The latest prognosis made by the consulting firm Aite Group says that online US discount brokerages are expected to attract more of their customers and assets in the years ahead. While the largest brokerages in America owned by banks declined during the financial crisis and suffered resignations of qualified brokers as well as departures of customers, online brokers were succeeding in their business. They have managed to increase online brokerage share of the $12.4 trillion in total U.S. client assets by 0.8 percentage points to 12 percent.

E*Trade Financial has astonished analysts, having published first quarterly profit for three years. Analysts had previously expected another loss and sending shares up by 7%.  

E*Trade, that was hurt significantly by the US mortgage crisis, posted second quarter net income of $35 million, or 12 cents a share, compared to a net loss of $143 million, or $2.16 a share, in Q2 2009.

Monday next week is set as the day for the launch of a new brokerage by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The new brokerage called Merrill Edge will target less affluent investors who trade through discount firms like Charles Schwab or E*Trade, a bank spokeswoman said.

Merrill Edge will be serving customers with $250,000 or less in investable assets and will directly rival such online brokerage firms like TD Ameritrade and E*Trade Financial Corp.

Roughly 500,000 existing Bank of America online brokerage clients will be transferred to the new service throughout the summer.

Online brokerage company E*Trade is being sued by an actress Lindsay Lohan over its "milkaholic" baby in a recent TV commercial from the online broker. The actress seeks damages of $100 million alleging that the commercial is based on her.

The commercial features a baby explaining to his girlfriend via a Web cam that he failed to call her the previous night because he was managing his portfolio on the firm's site.

On Thursday BofA’s wealth management head Sallie Krawcheck reported that Bank of America is in process of combining its online brokerage with Merrill Lynch’s web services as a part of a broader push to attract more "emerging affluent" investors.

BofA’s own online service, formerly known as Quick & Reilly, will be integrated with Merrill Lynch online. According to the statement the online brokerages along with Merrill’s call center will be brought under one roof to focus on investors with less than $250,000 of assets.

 Saxo, a Danish online investment bank, has agreed to purchase the Nordic unit of the online brokerage company E*Trade. Financial. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed yet.

Under the definitive agreement Saxo will acquire E*Trade International's local Nordic online trading business and bank, which includes client accounts in Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, and Norway.

 Today CSM has announced the completion of one of the most successful trades in CSM history. It was said that total gain from that trade exceeded $300,000! All documents including NLST chart and CSM brokerage account statement were published on the site.

Earlier CSM informed of the coming launch of the Spanish and Italian version of CSM website. This event is to happen within the coming 2-3 weeks.


 

 TD AMERITRADE Holding Corporation, an online brokerage company, reported its monthly metrics for October 2009. The report includes the following data:

• An average of 420,000 client trades per day in October 2009, up 2 percent from October 2008 and down 3 percent from September 2009. 
• Approximately $297.3 billion in total client assets as of Oct. 31, 2009, up 23 percent from October 2008 and down 2 percent from September 2009. 

 A class-action settlement over contact information stolen from online brokerage TD Ameritrade was rejected by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco claimed that the settlement is more to the advantage of Ameritrade and the plaintiffs' lawyers rather than benefiting affected customers.

All three Etrade, Scottrade and AD Ameritrade are leading names currently in the field of online brokerage companies. However all suit to different categories of investors. Here I am giving you an overview and comparison between three to help you choose the best for you.

E*Trade