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

To: ecommerceman who wrote (6867)	6/4/1999 3:51:00 PM
From: Frederick Langford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13953

Ecommerceman, Schaeffer's no fool. The shorts will give every reason to sell, but this type of press will get them sweating, you will see, they will get more vocal. Hellova move on the nets this PM. Fred

To: ecommerceman who wrote (6867)	6/4/1999 6:24:00 PM
From: Goldbug Guru	Respond to of 13953

Somebody likes E-Trade. June 4, 1999 Banking Online I just signed up for Internet banking today. That probably qualifies me as a Luddite in some circles, but hey, I didn't really have a reason to do my banking online until now. What changed is that my wife, Tekla, got tired of having me ask her to check our account balance, see if a deposit had been made, etc. You see, she's been handling our bank accounts, and has been Internet banking for a few months now. So it was easy for me to just ask her to go online. I was like those executives that have e-mail, but never touch a keyboard. Instead they make their secretaries do all the work, printing out and typing in messages. This morning Tekla said she'd had enough, and stayed on the phone for the 10 minutes it took me to sign up at wellsfargo.com. It was that quick. I didn't get a prize, but I helped Wells Fargo extend its lead in Internet banking. I was also inspired to sign up today because I wanted to see what all the raucous was about. I've had an Internet brokerage account with Waterside for almost a year, but I began to feel a bit behind the times when I read about E-Trade buying the Internet bank, Telebanc. (Not to mention Merrill Lynch finally giving in to Internet trading.) So has my life changed? No. It's certainly convenient to be able to look at the current balance of our accounts any time I want. But that gets sort of boring. I have a pretty good idea of what the balance is anyway, and unlike my brokerage account it doesn't change on an hour-to-hour basis. I was surprised to see the extent of offerings that Wells Fargo has on its site. It's certainly more staid than some other Websites (they do have to maintain the image of a bank after all). But Wells Fargo does have nearly as many services as E-Trade: $29.95 stock trades; news from cbsmarketwatch.com; mutual funds; retirement planning software; stock quotes. It's all there. But that doesn't mean I'm going to buy it all from them. I've been a Wells Fargo customer since the mid-1970s and they've always aggressively pushed financial products. But more often than not they were not competitive. And that's still true today. When I went looking for a home loan it was worth it for me to spend time looking for the best rate, and it wasn't Wells Fargo. When I transferred my 401(k) I didn't go to Wells Fargo. My point is not that Wells Fargo is screwed up. It is that people will shop around for financial services, and are willing to go to a variety of sources to get the best deal. That's why I am not particularly impressed with the merger of Travelers and Citicorp, now called Citigroup. Nor am I necessarily impressed by a financial Website like Wells Fargo that purports to have it all. But, if a company can bring together all of the financial products I need AND offer them at competitive rates. That would be a blessing, and a winning strategy. The company that seems to be moving most clearly in that direction is E-Trade. E-Trade has mostly been known as one of the largest online brokerages with 1 million accounts. But this week's announcement that they will buy the Internet bank Telebanc has forever changed that image. E-Trade is now offering a breadth of products and services, with many of them at competitive rates. (E-Trade customers can now buy a 12-month FDIC-insured CD from Telebanc paying 6.50%!) What many people don't know is that Telebanc was just the latest in a string of investments E-Trade has made to broaden its scope. Here's a short list. In June E-Trade launched its fourth overseas affiliate, E-Trade Sweden. It joins E-Trade France, E-Trade Canada and E-Trade Australia. In April E-Trade bought Clearstation, a financial Website offering technical information and news about stocks. In February the SEC gave E-Trade permission to be an asset manager, allowing the company to launch its own mutual funds. In January E-Trade co-founded an investment bank with Sandy Robertson (of Robertson Stephens fame) called E*Offering. E-Trade owns 28% of the new firm. In January E-Trade and Goldman Sachs each bought 25% of Archipelago, an electronic exchange for NASDAQ stocks. In March 1998 E-Trade invested in E-Loan, the online mortgage broker. E-Trade has been the most aggressive of the online financial services companies