Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : E*Trade (NYSE:ET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bikergirl who wrote (3017)	6/7/1998 8:29:00 AM
From: blackcash	Respond to of 13953

$15 before $25 ? whata joke!.....im not too sure what to think.but it does sound as if you are gonna be closer to even or a loss on that short..girl. for one thing expect a rally on their new site by the end of this month ...and second they always report earnings first week of month so i wouldnt be expecting a sell off going into earnings. godamn greed..it gets the best of us.

To: Bikergirl who wrote (3017)	6/7/1998 2:11:00 PM
From: Spytrdr	Respond to of 13953

you'd better start covering soon ETrade will launch the new site any minute and you don't want to be caught with your pants (or skirt) down :-) ___ I am still comfortable holding my short of EGRP at 26 1/8

To: Bikergirl who wrote (3017)	6/8/1998 6:09:00 PM
From: Ken M	Respond to of 13953

>> Do you believe that EGRP is now on a sustainable uptrend? << Yup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Save your energy the incline is increasing.

To: Bikergirl who wrote (3017)	6/8/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: mod	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13953

EGRP is a lot closer to 25 then 15. I think you'll need the luck. Piper Jaffray reported a renewed surge in on-line trading transactions, up 26% sequentially. Commissions have bottomed out. Payment for order flow is higher then expected. Good signs for EGRP. Dennis

To: Bikergirl who wrote (3017)	6/8/1998 10:56:00 PM
From: Spytrdr	Respond to of 13953

View From TheStreet.com Jun 08, 1998 Silicon Babylon: Y2K Gives ETrade an Edge By Cory Johnson West Coast Bureau Chief SAN FRANCISCO -- The badly beaten shareholders of ETrade (Nasdaq:EGRP - news) might feel like they're out of the race. But it ain't over yet, and a surprise handicap might just give the company a second wind. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based online brokerage firm is going full tilt to establish dominant market share in the Internet stock-trading arena. But as marketing and build-out expenses grow, its share price has stumbled badly since last fall. (See a related TSC story from Friday.) Conventional wisdom on Wall Street says that some big brokerages will step into the fray and blow by the tiny Internet competitor. But now some on the Street are starting to realize the big dogs are being held back by a surprise handicapper -- the year 2000 problem. "Bears on the Street say that ETrade is toast," says hedge fund manager Howard Love of Love Captial Management. "They say that anytime one of the wire houses -- [Salomon] Smith Barney, PaineWebber, Merrill [Lynch], AG Edwards -- anytime they want to, they can crush these guys." Thing is, ETrade has fewer legacy computing systems than its giant rivals and comparatively little Y2K risk. When the calendar turns to 2000 from 1999, the computer systems of giant financial institutions like Merrill Lynch and PaineWebber will go on the fritz, unless each company successfully executes a fix costing hundreds of millions of dollars. But with fewer than 400 work days left before the m illennium and Y2K budgets ballooning, the last thing information technology managers can do is retool their trading systems to run on the Internet. "IT departments at the major financial houses are buried with work right now," says William Ulrich of TriAxis research. "They don't have the capacity to take on massive new projects." So this year more and more companies have put off noncritical work until after 2000. What about Salomon Smith Barney and Citicorp's (NYSE:CCI - news) Citibank? On paper, it seems like a merger between Salomon Smith Barney parent Travelers (NYSE:TRV - news) and Citibank would create a natural Internet brokerage firm. Fuhgedaboudit, says Citibank's year 2000 project head Jim Devlin. " We've got 70% of our developers around the world working on the year 2000 problem," says Devlin. "We have about 500 million lines of code to look at and that's the No. 1 priority for this organization. And except for regulatory requirements, things we have to do by statute, we can't take on any other projects." Indeed, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that Citibank/Travelers is planning on spending at least $800 million on Y2K remediation. That kind of problem creates a whole new kind of barrier to entry in the Internet trading market. And ETrade Chief Executive Christos Cotsakos knows it. "Our entire plan is geared toward building right now, not two years from now," he says. "We don't have a five-year plan, we don't have a two-year plan -- we have a 90-day plan. The time is now." "The new paradigm is owning the customer," says Hambrecht & Quist analyst Genni Combes, who's particularly close to the company and participated in the ETrade underwriting. "And ETrade's strategy is about scale and getting market share in the near term. Customer retention is at 96% and the average customer generates $500 a year in revenue, but only costs $200 to obtain. So ETrade figures that the lifetime value of the customer is worth spending money and now is the time to do that." There was a time when the Street bought that logic. Last September, the stock ran up 46%, capped off by a tent-revival-like presentation by Cotsakos at the Montgomery Securities Growth Conference. Since then, however, the stock has tanked, plunging 57%, with 20% of that fall in the last month alone. Now some on Wall Street are seeing a bottom to E*trade's long slide. "I was short the group," says Love. "But I covered this a few days ago. The stocks have been looking a lot stronger and I've lost the conviction that things are going to get worse." c 1998 TheStreet.com, All Rights Reserved.

To: Bikergirl who wrote (3017)	7/13/1998 3:13:00 PM
From: mod	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13953

<<From: +Bikergirl Sunday, Jun 7 1998 3:14AM ET I am still comfortable holding my short of EGRP at 26 1/8(I am getting a short interest rebate from my broker, and I feel EGRP is going to hit 15 before it hits 25) Good luck if you are long, you are going to need it. >> Bikergirl, At $32 and rising, I'm curious, what are your thoughts now? Covering or holding? With the Softbank investment, $15 sure looks impossible now. Now that EGRP has finally been blessed as a true "internet" stock, being short is mighty dangerous. I'll wish you good luck now, I think you need it more at the moment. Dennis