Ask most investors about E*Trade and you’ll get a mouthful about why the company is a toxic asset to be avoided at all costs.

I can’t say I blame them. After all, the company did make a foolish foray into the real estate lending business. And it did so at precisely the wrong time – the top of the market. In turn, like many banks, it got sacked as loan losses mounted.

At that point, forget a takeover. Bankruptcy appeared more imminent. And the stock quickly reflected this widely held belief, plunging by 95% from its 2007 high to trade below $1.

Unsurprisingly, many investors sprinted away from the company. But here’s what most of them don’t understand: Beneath the muck of E*Trade’s real estate operations, it possesses a valuable asset – its brokerage business…

For example, even during aterrible year for stocks in 2008, E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) still managed to grow

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TD AMERITRADE Holdings Corp. (...

This post is a follow up to my previous blog about the Best Penny Stock Brokerages.

Oftentimes when penny stock traders enter the game of short selling penny stocks they assume just any old brokerage they use to buy penny stocks will be sufficient enough to short sell them too. Yet that assumption is WRONG. It has to do with 2 things:

1Some brokerages won’t let you short penny stocks

2The issue of share availability (borrows) comes into play

Your typical mainstream brokerages like Etrade, Scottrade, and TD-Ameritrade will not be tolerable when short selling penny stocks. I’ve heard horror stories of penny stock traders trying to short with these brokerages, specifically with these brokerages not having shares available to short a desired penny stock. When you’re short selling penny stocks down here in the gutter, they typically are coined “hard to borrow” stocks, i.e. shares available to short

...

U.S. stocks rose on Thursday as investors bet the U.S. economic downturn may be easing following reports on fourth-quarter economic growth and weekly jobless claims that landed roughly in line with expectations.

Standouts in the broad run-up included shares of Best Buy , up 11.3 percent to $37.24 after the electronics chain’s quarterly profit topped estimates and its yearly outlook boosted optimism about consumer spending.

Retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc was among the top boosts on the Dow, rising more than 2 percent to $52.88, while the S&P retail index gained nearly 5 percent.

Shares of natural resources companies rose along with higher commodity prices. Shares of steel maker Nucor rose 5.6 percent to $41.25 and U.S. Steel Corp was up 5.9 percent to $24.86.

“Obviously the tide is shifting. We’ve gone from every piece of news being incrementally bad

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Thursday January 8, 2009 Navivest

The stock of online brokerage and investor education provider thinkorswim (SWIM), are called higher in pre-market trading after retail broker TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (AMTD), announced this morning that it will acquire the company in a cash and stock deal worth $606 million.

TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation is offering $3.34 in cash and .398 shares of TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation stock for each thinkorswim share.

Using TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation’s Wednesday closing price of $13.48, the stock portion translates into $5.365 for a total per share price of $8.70. The total cash portion will be $225 million. TD Ameritrade expects the deal to be accretive, raising fiscal 2010 profits by 3-7%, and by 15% annually, a year after the integration is complete.

According to the companies, thinkorswim is one of the fastest growing online brokerage firms, with unique trading and investor education capabilities.

In the one-year period

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span style="font-weight:bold;"New Year. New You. New Nest Egg./spanbr /br /By Natalie Pace,br /Author of a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593154917?ie=UTF8tag=antiquestocka-20linkCode=as2camp=1789creative=9325creativeASIN=1593154917"Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is: Investment Strategies for Lifetime Wealth from a #1 Wall Street Stock Picker/aimg src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=antiquestocka-20l=as2o=1a=1593154917" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /br /br /Build a better nest egg with 6 easy, sound strategies for 2009.br /br /The stock market lost 38% in 2008, but if you lost more than 20%, your problem wasn't really the stock market, it was the design of your nest egg. Storms occur in markets, as they do in the real world, but your home shouldn't be flooding every time it happens.br /br /You know intuitively that your retirement plan doesn't work. Your nest egg has drowned twice now in the last eight years. You were elated with your returns in 1999 and then devastated when your assets imploded ...

Fresh from the west coast, it's off to the east coast. NYC.It will be a busy week with travel, meetings, and the TD AMERITRADE ApexLIVE event taking place at the Marriott Marquis on Tuesday (tomorrow).I've already met with the folks at Minyanville and Knight Capital Group. I'll have more to say about the innovative ways that each of these groups are preparing to use Trade-Ideas - and how you can learn from them how to use the tool with more clarity, better results.If you are in NY, dear reader, and would like to meet up, please let me know in the comments.The TD AMERITRADE event will showcase our new trading automation application we make available for TD AMERITRADE customers. You can create a strategy, backtest and determine probabilities for its success in the market right now, and then automate the strategy ...

Dr. Brett Steenbarger and TD Ameritrade Take a Look at the New Automated Trading Bot

Quick questions:

1. Can you articulate your ideal pattern that gives you an edge in the market? Can you quantify it?