Against All Odds, E*TRADE Keeps Growing (ETFC)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Etrade_logoE*TRADE FINANCIAL Corporation (NASDAQ: ETFC) has been hit much harder than other financial institutions and the last two weeks have been rather challenging  for the company and its shareholders.  This morning we are seeing some stabilizing data.  The company’s gross new retail accounts opened in October were 131,475 with net new retail accounts of 63,538.

It is also seeing an increase in trading activity.  Its DART’s, orTotal Daily Average Revenue Trades, rose by 15% from September levelsto 248,817.  Net new customer asset flows of $1.6 billion in Octoberwere double September levels.

E*TRADE’s total end-of-period retail accounts were listed as 4,499,763.  The company is seeing the same trend as at other firms with a drop incustomer assets (crashing markets tend to do that).  E*TRADE’s totalretail customer assets declined $22.8 billion from September to total$119.4 billion.

This net account adds for October was E*TRADE’s best month in over fiveyears.  It also looks like customers arecontinuing to reduce their margin.

Apparently, we are not the only ones who think these shares have beenhit too hard of late and that these are impressive metrics consideringhow the state of the economy.  Shares are up 8% at $1.35 before the market opens, which isstill at the very bottom of the $1.21 to $6.04 trading range over thelast 52-weeks.

Jon C. Ogg
November 19, 2008

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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