Lisa

Covestor and VesTopia: Winners and Losers from Peer to Peer Investing

Interesting to see how these sites are doing. According to Compete, Vestopia is now massively bigger than Covestor:

siteanalytics.compete....

Citadel Takes 20% Stake in E*Trade; Shares Retreat (update)

E*Trade never tried to "convert the brokerage into a bank". It offers exactly the product that customers want: an integrated view of their bank and brokerage accounts, with the ability to move money easily between them and to maximize yield by parking cash in whichever account offers the highest interest rate.

Caplan's mess-up was the purchase of CDOs, and E*Trade's massive misjudgement of the mortgage market. But the integration of bank and brokerage, both from a customer perspective and the company's perspective, is a no-brainer. As a result, E*Trade has by far the best online financial platform, and Citadel will profit massively from this investment.

It's amazing that in the hysteria about E*Trade's financial melt-down so much confusion has been spread from a product perspective. Next thing, we'll be hearing how banks that offer deposit accounts and CDs shouldn't be making mortgage loans because mortgages have been a disaster. But of course banks should make loans as well as take deposits -- just not on ridiculous terms to customers lacking the ability to pay back the loans.