Is E*Trade More Than A One-Trick Dot Com?
from the diversification-at-work dept
Things are going strong enough at ETrade that they’ve bought more Superbowl commercial time, and they’re still sponsoring the half-time show. Are they still stuck in the dot com era or is there some more there there? Business Week takes a look at ETrade to see if they have gone beyond the dot com stage. It certainly seems like they’re trying to become a full financial services company, and have expanded in a number of directions to provide such services to customers. However, not everyone believes that customers will look to ETrade to provide services beyond basic online trading. Also, many analysts are afraid that their valuation is being pushed up to unreasonable levels following a better than expected quarter. I think it’s amusing that a few years ago no one seemed to think critically about any company in the dot com space, and now every article feels the need to point out why a company that is doing well probably is valued too high and won’t be able to do a “second act”. Update: In a somewhat related story, ETrade also announced today that they’re starting a radio content syndication network to offer “original” financial content to radio stations.
