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Non-Tech : TD Waterhouse Group (TWE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Madarasz who wrote (580)	7/10/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: Craig A	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1413

Some comments for the board. Have had Waterhouse accounts for three years now. Monthly statements are wonderful as is the end of the 1099 inv.My local branch is dynamite. Staff is beyond cordial and professional. I send the brokers dynamite munchies for the Holidays. They bend over backwards to solve any problems. I trade about 90 times a year. The site. Slower than coal tar lately. Have been furious. There have also been 20 minute waits at 6:30 AM if I wanted to talk to someone. Calls that I hope reach my local branch are often switched to NYC. I suggest visiting SCH board for comments there. All houses got caught with their pants down. Or they are not responding to the new volume with more staff. Was going to switch but it appears that I'd be out of the pan into the fire. Overall I'm hoping for improved service. Things have improved a bit with phone pick-up. I'm thinking of buying the stock.I own SCH but bought it high. "Common sense" would dictate that this is the bottom floor for TWE. What would be the downside risk? Comments appreciated. Craig

To: John Madarasz who wrote (580)	7/12/1999 7:38:00 PM
From: upanddown	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1413

John This article from Thestreet.com also implies that we could get a nice bounce at the beginning of analyst coverage. I might add to my position before the end of the quiet period. Who were the major underwriters for TWE ? For Online Brokers, It's Been a Long Road to Respect By Caroline Humer Staff Reporter 7/12/99 10:15 AM ET Online brokers can stop wearing out that old Aretha tune. Wall Street's finally giving up respect. After two years of being heard only by Credit Suisse First Boston's Bill Burnham and a few others, cyberbrokers are making more and more analysts' play lists, including those of high-end firms like Goldman Sachs (GS:NYSE). The reasons behind this shift are diverse -- everything from the full-service industry's own move online to exploding market caps -- but the result has often been the same: higher stock prices as online brokers garner more attention. Take Jersey City, N.J.-based National Discount Brokers (NDB:NYSE). It finally got analyst coverage after its June 22 secondary offering from the two financial services research houses that worked on the deal, Deutsche Bank and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. The result was a rise of 60% in the stock on June 29 and 30. Before this, NDB had traded for more than 10 years (it changed its name from the Sherwood Group in 1997) with no major analyst coverage. It closed Friday at 54 3/16, down 4 13/16. NDB isn't the only one getting more attention. The number of analysts covering the bigger online brokers such as ETrade (EGRP:Nasdaq) and Ameritrade (AMTD:Nasdaq) has nearly doubled this year. For Michael Flanagan, an independent securities analyst who has followed the securities industry for the past seven years, the predominance of online trading means picking up the whole lot by the end of this year. That includes ETrade, Ameritrade and Schwab (SCH:NYSE), not to mention newly public companies DLJdirect (DIR:NYSE), TD Waterhouse (TWE:NYSE) and Wit Capital (WITC:Nasdaq). "I've always viewed the traditional discount and online brokers as another group, but the Merrill (MER:NYSE) announcement [that it would add discount online trading] blurred those lines and now the two businesses are commingling," Flanagan says. Flanagan and several other analysts say reasons to get into these stocks include growing market capitalizations and client demand. For instance, Schwab grabbed headlines early this year when its market cap topped Merrill Lynch's. It's now at $43.5 billion compared with Merrill's $28.2 billion. "When ETrade is bigger than PaineWebber (PWJ:NYSE), it makes sense to cover it," says one analyst at a large firm. Dan Burke, an analyst at Boston's Gomez Advisors, a consulting firm created in 1997 to cover the Internet and online brokers, says growing investment banking is another explanation. As the number of banks, check-payment and mortgage companies and real estate firms on the Internet explode, so does investment banking activity. That means investment banks will use their analysts to attract clients looking for underwriting or other advisory services. That also plays into the broader coverage phenomenon as some analysts who once strictly covered the online brokerage beat start expanding to financial services in a bid to lure banking business. For example, in May, San Francisco-based BancBoston Robertson Stephens hired brokerage analyst Scott Appleby away from Dutch bank ABN Amro specifically to do e-finance. Then in mid-June, Hambrecht & Quist (HQ:NYSE) picked up Greg Smith from boutique investment bank Putnam Lovell de Guardiola & Thornton for the same task. But it's not just market cap or investment banking pulling in analysts. It seems old Wall Street has had a change of heart considering its younger cousins. "I don't think [online trading] was taken seriously," says Burke at Gomez. The Internet mania -- the stocks and the online trading -- differed from the logic of investment banking, he says. "They suddenly realized these are real companies and they're staying." That happened just about the same time that Prudential Securities laid out its online plans and Merrill Lynch announced it would offer discount online trading. Other full-service brokers are due to follow. Wall Street started playing catch-up with Ameritrade and ETrade a few months ago when Goldman and Lehman (LEH:NYSE) weighed in. (Goldman ended up dismissing one of its junior analysts in May after he reportedly plagiarized the title and passages of an ETrade report by then-Putnam Lovell analyst Smith; Goldman declined to comment.) DLJdirect, which tracks its parent company Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette's (DLJ:NYSE) stock, has coverage from the securities and Internet analysts at its underwriters Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MWD:NYSE) and Merrill. That's the trend at most large firms, according to recruiters. "Solly or Pru is going to need to cover Merrill Lynch and DLJdirect, and my expectation would be that in most cases, it will be the analysts who have been covering the brokerage firm itself who will expand rather than hiring from the outside," says Leslie Gordon, head of investment banking recruiting at Korn/Ferry International. Wit Capital got coverage from its underwriters, Thomas Weisel Partners and Bear Stearns (BSC:NYSE), which pushed up its stock. It and TD Waterhouse, a unit of Toronto Dominion (TD:NYSE) are also under consideration by analysts, including Salomon Smith Barney, which underwrote TD Waterhouse's offering. Two new analysts are covering Schwab: Pacific Crest and Bear Stearns, and Salomon Smith Barney is considering coverage. While underwriting is the driving force behind a lot of coverage, CIBC World Markets, which covers Schwab, plans on adding ETrade, Ameritrade and TD Waterhouse this year. Lehman also is looking at adding broadly to its list. As Flanagan says, "You just can't avoid it."