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E*TRADE history
E*TRADE company history timeline
The first online service, called Tickerscreen, was initiated in May 1982 by Max Ule, as a division of Rosenkrantz, Ehrenkrants, Lyon & Ross, Inc.
When William Porter formed TradePlus with $15,000 in startup capital in 1982, the online investment revolution was already underway.
By 1984, C.D. Anderson counted some 500 TradePlus customers, who contributed as much as 12 percent of the firm's commissions.
Nevertheless, TradePlus continued to build, in 1985 signing Quick & Reilly, then the nation's third-largest discount broker, to offer TradePlus through the Compuserve Information Network.
1987: The market crashes in October; online trading services wither.
By the summer of 1987, TradePlus reported that its servers were in use nearly every minute, often by several people at once, 24 hours per day, including a large number of international customers as well as domestic customers.
In 1991, however, Porter, still active with TradePlus, again showed his visionary side.
By 1992, combined revenues at TradePlus and E*Trade neared $850,000.
E*Trade Securities was founded in 1992 in Palo Alto, California, as a subsidiary of Trade*Plus, but its online trading technology was in use as early as 1983. It wasn't until 1992 that Porter launched E*Trade Securities, one of the first all-electronic brokerages.
The company, which counted 44 employees in 1994, scrambled to keep up with its own growth, adding more than 200 employees in one year and expanding its office space from 4,800 square feet to more than 20,000 square feet in 1994.
E*Trade found its system overloaded with customer calls, and in the summer of 1995 was forced to quadruple its systems.
By 1995, the new American information revolution was firmly underway.
With Porter as chairman, Cotsakos was named president and CEO in April 1996 and led E*Trade into its IPO that summer.
In April 1996 the company opened a second facility in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento.
E*Trade's growth pace continued, seeing revenues more than doubling again to near $52 million for 1996.
In June 1997, E*Trade and leading World Wide Web search engine Yahoo!, which recorded some ten million "hits" per day, announced an agreement which added a direct link to E*Trade's Web site from the Yahoo! site.
Perhaps the most challenging event of the year was the stock market "crash" of October 20, 1997, when on two consecutive days the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ Composite Index experienced the largest one-day point drops and the largest one-day point gains in the history of Wall Street.
In 1997 E*Trade raised additional capital through a secondary offering.
In December 1998 the company launched its E*Trade Bond Center, bringing the benefits of online brokerage and financial services to fixed-income investors.
Other events for 1998 included two acquisitions: OptionsLinc, a Web-and telephone-based service for executing and managing employee stock option and purchase plans; and Share-Data Inc., the leader in stock plan software for private and public companies.
In 1999, revenues increased by 132.4 percent over the previous year to $662.3 million.
In 1999 E*Trade's brand-building expenditures and temporary moratorium on profits paid off.
Internationally, E*Trade expanded in fiscal 1999 by opening Web sites in France, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
E*Trade Bank was launched in April 2000, and wireless banking and brokerage services were first offered by E*Trade in October 2000.
E*Trade returned to profitability in fiscal 2000 ending September 30, 12 months ahead of plan.
Global growth also was strong in fiscal 2000, another testimonial to the company's brand recognition.
In fact, in just one short year, E*Trade saw its revenues drop and profits plummet, with the company posting a loss of $241.5 million in 2001.
For 2001 E*Trade planned to roll out its international trading platform, based on Versus Technologies, for more than 650 institutional customers worldwide.
In June 2002, the company acquired Tradescape Corporation in a move that nearly doubled the number of its brokerage transactions.
"E*Trade Group Inc ." Gale Encyclopedia of E-Commerce. . Retrieved June 21, 2022 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/economics/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/etrade-group-inc
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E*TRADE competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TD Ameritrade | 1971 | $6.0B | 8,939 | - |
| Fidelity Investments | 1946 | $18.2B | 65,000 | 1,138 |
| SECU | 1937 | $440.0M | 7,233 | 34 |
| Flagstar Bank | 1987 | $1.7B | 3,938 | 189 |
| Simmons Bank | 1903 | $2.0B | 2,923 | 140 |
| Financial Partners Credit Union | 1937 | $42.0M | 100 | - |
| Heartland Payment Systems | 1997 | $2.1B | 3,734 | 1 |
| Trustmark | 1889 | $116.4B | 2,680 | 367 |
| HSBC Bank | 1880 | $5.2B | 15,650 | 134 |
| BECU | 1935 | $780.0M | 2,490 | 46 |
E*TRADE history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of E*TRADE, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about E*TRADE. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at E*TRADE. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by E*TRADE. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of E*TRADE and its employees or that of Zippia.
E*TRADE may also be known as or be related to E TRADE FINANCIAL CORP, E*TRADE Financial, E*TRADE Financial Corporation, E-Trade Financial Corporation and ETRADE.