Discount brokers are dominating too much of the market? Ameritrade even proposed merging with Schwab. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070822/td_ameritrade_e_trade.html?.v=6
escaped etrade to go to datek datek bought out by ameritrade ameritrade and etrade merges back with etrade again
yeah, i' mthinking the same thing... had an account at datek, that got merged. left e-trade... opened a secondary (tertiary?) account with izone. well, we'll see. (edit; at least ameritrade isn't thinking of merging into watley!)
The thing is who will hold the "style" in case of a merger. Ameritrade and etrade are way too different in the way they handle customers and accounts.
You have 2 brokers, one ok, on really bad, combining and screwing the customer basically. All so the discount brokers can line their pockets even more, give themselves more pricing power. I really think that anybody forced to adapt to the E-trade platform via merger from another brokerage would run in a flash. If the fees don't get you, the commissions will. And not to mention the poor fills. I have NO IDEA how E-trade managed to get 4.7 million accounts, goes to show you the stupidity of the average investor.
I don't know what your problem with E-trade is. I have ~40M in a private-type account setup with them; decent fills and everything I need from a discount broker (very favorable margin, etc...). They've treated me better than TD has. Fees are generally the same between the two after negotiations. I'd probably move the rest of my accounts over to e-trade if I didn't have to talk to every client about it. edit: Actually, to date, the only complaint I have about e-trade when thinking about it is that for some reason they keep calling me every 2-3months to ask if I want to open more accounts; I tell them I don't need anymore and then they proceed to tell me about the specials and discounts I could get if I opened one (ignoring the fact if you've already got a few million+ with them chances are you're going to get what you want from them and not need specials, lol)
E-trade is one of the worst--may be slightly above TradeKing overall. Ameritrade is still one of better brokerage firms. I hope they do not merge. Or, if they do merge, the merged company do not keep Etrade management style. There are a few reasons E-trade seems to have 4+ million accounts. Etrade often provides different (i.e. considerably higher) commission structures and less features for employee stock accounts for many different companies. Many of those accounts do not have to be too much asset or active. They also encourage people to have multiple accounts. They also gobbled up a few other brokerage firms not too long ago.
Hello, I believe Etrade improved a lot during past time. Do not forget that it is very friendly to non US customers. It is the only broker replying positive to accept direct transfers from Paypal what is extremely important for customers from many countries. E*trade pro is well usable platform without necessity to learn a lot /I wish few more indicators working with it but I can live without it/. My only complaint is that the support is often replying not exactly to my questions,they are for sure in hurry and I need sometimes ask 2-3 times to get satisfactory reply. Another question bothering me is that hidden stops are often hit even the price was not closer to it as $0.1, etc. I have few complaints to executions that stop was triggered even if the price was very far to it /if stop is triggered at 1.18 and the lowest price was 1.30 like happened once with TAG to me it seems a big problem - they replied that bid on exchange somewhere on Saturn or Jupiter was that low/. Otherwise I think they have many international customers because they understand that our money are not different than US money and I am sure they have millions non US accounts. Other brokerages are just sleeping and not thinking what to do to attract international customers /we need more help in begin to arrange accounts and are not familiar what to do and how to do/. Etrade is winner on this pool. If you want open brokerage account for US stock and you are from Malaysia, Romania or Saudi Arabia Etrade has no competition in USA - they know what we need and how to arrange it. As minimum other are not advertising that they can do it as well and do not have tools helping us. Just my 0.02 cent for other brokers. Without accepting Paypal like account funding method you can not win in competition with Etrade.