The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
E*TRADE is an online brokerage and electronic trading platform, now operated as a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley under the E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley brand. It provides self-directed accounts covering stocks, ETFs, options, mutual funds, futures and bonds with no per-trade commission on standard stock, ETF and options orders, alongside retirement accounts and, through Morgan Stanley Private Bank, integrated savings, checking, certificate of deposit and credit line products. Clients access the service through two tiers of platform: the general E*TRADE web and mobile app aimed at everyday investors, and Power E*TRADE, including the Power E*TRADE Pro desktop application, built for active and advanced traders with more advanced order types and charting tools. Within the US retail brokerage category, E*TRADE differentiates itself through the split between a mainstream self-directed platform and a dedicated active-trader platform, backed by Morgan Stanley's in-house equity research and analyst reports, plus optional access to human Morgan Stanley financial advisors and automated portfolio management for clients who want a managed option. In 2026 it began offering direct ownership of spot cryptocurrency, rather than exposure through an ETF wrapper, executing trades through infrastructure provider Zerohash at a 0.50% fee per transaction, a lower rate than the 0.75% Charles Schwab charges on its own spot bitcoin and ether trading launched earlier the same year. The E*TRADE lineage traces to TradePlus, founded in Palo Alto, California by physicist William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb with 15,000 dollars in start-up capital; the firm executed its first trade over a CompuServe connection in 1983 and rebranded as E-Trade in 1992 as it opened electronic trading to individual investors. E-Trade Financial Corporation went public on NASDAQ on August 16, 1996 under the ticker ETFC, pricing shares at 10.50 dollars. Morgan Stanley announced its acquisition of E-Trade on February 20, 2020 in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately 13 billion dollars, the largest US bank acquisition since the 2008 financial crisis, with E-Trade shareholders receiving 1.0432 Morgan Stanley shares per share held; the deal closed October 2, 2020, and client accounts were migrated onto Morgan Stanley's systems between March and September 2023. At the time of the acquisition E-Trade held 5.2 million client accounts and more than 360 billion dollars in retail client assets; by 2025 self-directed client assets had grown to roughly 1.67 trillion dollars across more than 8 million households. In January 2022, FINRA censured E-Trade Securities and fined it 350,000 dollars over supervisory failures tied to potentially manipulative trading activity. E*TRADE's crypto trading rolled out as a phased pilot from May 2026, giving clients direct trading in bitcoin, ether and solana, with Morgan Stanley planning to extend access to its full base of roughly 8.6 million E*TRADE clients and to launch a proprietary digital wallet in the second half of 2026 intended to hold crypto alongside tokenized versions of stocks, bonds and real estate.
