E*Trade’s (ETFC) Hidden Value

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Because of its exposure to mortgage-related securities, shares in E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) have fallen from a 52-week high of $25.79 to $3.63. Over the last six months, shares of rivals Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) and TDAmeritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) are relatively flat.

The value of the discount brokerage arm of E*Trade may be more greater than many investors think.

In the most recent Barron’s survey of the best online brokers, E*Trade received a better total score that either Schwab or TDAmeritrade and did substantially better than those companies in the categories of "range of offerings", "trading technology", and "costs". Those things are worth a great deal to retail customers. They are great leverage for the eventually value of the firm if one of its rivals wants to make an offer.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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