Today’s the day: ETFC

I didn’t tell anyone but I bought an amount of shares from E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) recently when I thought it’s either going down or will make me rich. Reading a lot about shorts in the past months I decided to risk some money.

$2.55 apiece is not very much, so: what risk???

Ok, nobody could foresee what would happen today but one thing is clear: I am going to rip of a lot of people who went short on ETFC.

Nice that the US-Dollar went up, too. Maybe that stock is going up to $5.00 today, who knows?

US-Stocks viewed from the Eurozone

So far there was some money to be made with US-stocks. I myself made some with E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) but less than I could’ve expected since the Dollar went down and down against other major currencies. That leads me to the idea that one should consider the exposure of certain stocks to export. Oracle sells a lot of its software and service to all parts of the world, E*Trade has branches in the Eurozone. Especially E*Trade with the momentarily low price seems to be a good re-investment for people in the Eurozone or Yen: the stock price in US-Dollars now is somewhat 10% lower that 2 months ago at the same levels. Someone investing in Euro has either lost 10% or can re-invest 10% cheaper now.

The question is: will the Dollar go lower or not?

I’d say, the risk of going much lower is far more unlikely than going up. This means, buying US-stocks now could bring a lot more profit than risking a lot. Especially with cheap stocks like E*Trade. Honestly: the bankruptcy-szenario of Prashant Bhatia is gone with the wind and a single act (or a unique chance seen from today’s point of view). No one will listen to this guy and his fantastic analytics anymore …

However, E*Trade remains a good investment for long – but also for fast money since the volatility will keep up.

ETFC : E*Trade rebound

Sometimes it pays out not to be a chicken. After realizing that E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) was just a pinball in the game of Prashant Bhatia, the wizzard of Citibank, I was tempted to buy this stock but chickened out when it hit 2,-$.

A biiiig mistake though I was convinced that price was definetly way too low – but there was the danger of foreign fulfilling prophecy: if a guy like that Bhatia from Citi could bring a stock that much down just by blubbering E*Trade could go bankrupt though he had no data to project this – who knew what could happen next? The stock could’ve gone to zero.

So, instead of risking at least only 2.000,- $ I did nothing. Stupid me. But that’s the way it is: when fear switches off reason. Well, in the end I went in at 3,- $ so it’s not soo bad. I just don’t know yet if I should go long or not since the technical analysis shows a clear upward trend.

I could imagine that the stock will see double digits within the next months. But I hesitate to engage heavily.

ETFC : E*Trade again

So E*Trade made it again.

Tonite Reuters claimed E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) gets a $2.55 billion cash infusion from a group of investors led by Citadel Investment Group that already owned a share in E*Trade and will have a bigger share at about 20% now.

I wonder if those guys already went in at 3.46 last week when the stock was hammered down by speculation and rumors … Maybe one should invest in Citadel or in Blackrock since they got a nice pre-xmas present: a $3 billion asset backed portfolio for just 800 million dollars plus 20% of E*Trade. Sounds quite a good deal for me. Who gives me 1 dollar for my 25 cents?

So guys – what moron sold his ETFC-shares yesterday for some bucks? A lot of idiots who went short and talked the stock down are now bleeding, I guess.

After gotten rid of the sub-prime mess E*Trade should be quite well doing as an online broker like it was from the start. Back to the roots so to say.

ETFC : E*Trade

An interesting stock is E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) which is traded on NASDAQ.

It’s just some weeks that the stock was traded well above 25,- $ when suddenly a move south started. Looking back, I get the impression someone knew much more than others because the slide started remarkable slowly and inconspicuously.

E*Trade is a broker and very successful. The stock went down when the company unveiled that their bank (E*Trade Bank) was involved in that US sub-prime desaster. Of course – other banks, too (Even Citigroup itself now)- but when an unknown analyst of Citibank “analysed” that E*Trade had to write off hundreds of millions because of sub-prime the stock lost 75% of its value. The real strange (and therefore interesting) thing is: How on earth did this guy come to the conclusion that there was supposed to be a “15% chance of going bankrupt” ?

I mean, is this Citibank analyst Prashant Bhatia a magician from India? Even if he had an inside view into the books of E*Trade – how can he precisely predict an exact “15% chance of bankrupcy”? And then all of a sudden he “has left” and was “unreachable for comments”.

This stinks, folks.

However, neither the SEC has invited him to a nice interview nor E*Trade has threatened Citi for the “irresponsable” words of Mr. Prashant Bhatia. If management of E*Trade was really clean I had expected some more action than just this lame reaction.

Anyway, what makes the stock of ETFC so hot is: it’s a pure bet in any direction. Facts and numbers are not of interest now and everybody is going short or long on this stock to make money, rumors are being spread around in his/her own interest to move the stock.

It could easily be that ETFC is going to recover in some months if the write-offs are all that happened but in the meantime keep an eye on that stock and be careful while jumping on and off it.