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[Miles]

Take a look at ETFC, news below explains why. Sorry no source link, got this in an email:

E-Trade's battered stock falls further on pricing for public offering, share dilution
On Friday June 19, 2009, 12:30 pm EDT

BOSTON (AP) -- Shares of E-Trade Financial Corp. tumbled Friday as traders bid down the stock after the struggling online brokerage and bank announced it priced its capital-raising public stock offering at a steep discount.

The stock, which started the week out at $1.90, fell 19 cents, or 12.6 percent, to $1.25 in midday trading.

Before markets opened, E-Trade announced it has priced a public offering of 435 million shares of common stock at $1.10 per share, a 23.1 percent discount compared with the stock's Thursday closing price of $1.43. E-Trade expects to raise $478.5 million through the offering, before underwriting discounts and commissions, but the move will also dilute the value of existing shares.

Barclays Capital analyst Roger Freeman wrote in a research note that share dilution and other aspects of E-Trade's broader capital-raising plan will shave about 67 percent from his 2011 full-year earnings estimate for E-Trade, from 54 cents per share to 18 cents.

Freeman estimated the company's count of outstanding shares would rise from 568 million in this year's first quarter to at least 2.27 billion.

The broader capital-raising plan, which includes a debt exchange, is expected to yield $150 million in interest expense savings.

With those savings, and the additional cash E-Trade expects from the stock offering, Freeman wrote that he is "reasonably comfortable that the bank is in quite good shape, and will likely be able to weather the coming losses from the loan portfolio, with the exception of any losses arising from well beyond currently contemplated stress scenarios."

E-Trade is trying to pull itself out from under mortgage-related loan losses. The New York-based company was hit hard by the recession and collapse of the real-estate market as the value of investments plummeted.

In late April, E-Trade said that the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision had asked it to raise capital quickly after it reported a larger-than-expected first-quarter loss and boosted its reserves for bad loans. The money from the stock offering, along with the debt exchange offer, could help E-Trade lower its debt and buffer itself further from loan losses.

E-Trade shares, which have traded in a 52-week range of 59 cents to $4.05, are up about 24 percent since January.

[Miles]

Anyone else follow this badly beaten up tech stock?

Noticed them flashing ETFCs chart a lot on CNBC today. These guys are in dire straights financially (primarily the bank division) but I think with the cash they raised from the stock offering they are safe from BK until the fall.

Then there is the very real chance the brokerage could get bought out by a competitor like Ameritrade. Today's article on thestreet.com was pretty interesting --> E*Trade Capital Efforts May Lead to Sale | Financial Services | Financial Articles & Investing News | TheStreet.com

[Longshot]

Hi Miles

Found this looking around for more people tracking ETFC.

Still tracking it?