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Key Points Morgan Stanley will acquire brokerage firm E-Trade for $13 billion, the companies announced. The investment bank will pay $58.74 a share in stock for E-Trade in a deal bringing together $3.1 trillion in client assets. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, follows last year’s $26 billion all-stock purchase of TD Ameritrade by Charles Schwab. ================================================================== Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley will acquire E-Trade for $13 billion, the companies announced Thursday, the latest in a consolidation wave for the brokerage industry that collectively lowered trading commissions to zero last year. Morgan Stanley will pay $58.74...

The race to the zero-bound is on. That’s not an interest-rate policy development, but an investing fee trend. Charles Schwab Corp SCHW, -2.41% on Tuesday said it would no longer charge a commission on trades of U.S. and Canada-listed stocks, exchange-traded funds, and options, starting October 7. That’s just the latest volley in the incredible shrinking broker fee war. Behemoth asset managers like Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab have spent the past few years leapfrogging each other to offer lower and lower commissions. That’s thanks in part to the rise in popularity of ETFs, funds that in most cases passively follow...

Does anyone know what is up with E-Trade? Their customer website seems to be down, as does their call center. There was no notice of scheduled downtime, so it looks like something bad has happened.

<p>MINEOLA, N.Y. — Lindsay Lohan is feuding with the E-Trade babies.</p> <p>The actress has filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming a television ad for the Wall Street firm that aired during the Super Bowl and Olympics was modeled after her.</p>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - E*Trade Financial Corp's (ETFC) firesale of mortgage-backed securities has conjured up a new worst-case scenario for Wall Street's portfolio of subprime assets by knocking their value even lower. Financial analysts on Friday said E*Trade got anywhere from 11 cents to 27 cents on the dollar for its $3.1 billion portfolio of asset-backed securities. The portfolio sale was part of a $2.5 billion capital infusion from a group led by hedge fund Citadel investment Group. "The portfolio sale, one of the few observable trades of such assets, has very clear, generally negative, implications for the valuation of...

Shares of E-Trade Fall on Plans for Mortgage-Related Writedowns in the Fourth Quarter NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of E-Trade Financial Corp. plunged in early morning trading Monday as investors worried over a Friday announcement the company would take larger-than-expected writedowns on its holdings of securities backed by home loans. Shares of E-Trade fell 4.33, or 50 percent, to $4.26 in morning trading. Shares had traded between $8.02 and $26.08 during the past year. Citi Investment Research analyst Prashant Bhatia cut E-Trade's rating to "Sell" from "Hold." Bhatia said there is a 15 percent chance E-Trade will have to declare...

Third World hackers are sneaking into E*Trade and TD Ameritrade online stock-trading accounts and looting them in a massive pump, dump and run scheme. Scammers from Eastern Europe and Asia are targeting the online traders in one of the biggest cases of identity theft to strike the U.S. securities industry. In a conference call last week, E*Trade said it spent $18 million in the third quarter to compensate customers affected by trading fraud. TD Ameritrade said it also suffered losses because of bogus trading by unauthorized users who pried their way into customer accounts, but declined to specify an amount....