Filed under: Major movement, Good news, Options, Technical Analysis

E*TRADE Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: ETFC) shares are making an early jump today after the company announced it has sold about $3 billion of mortgage-backed securities and municipal bonds. The sale was part of a restructuring plan to reduce risk and maintain higher capital levels. The sale will result in a loss of less than $5 million, according to the company.

ETFC also said it will exit its institutional trading business. Both moves are part of an attempt to give the company added ballast in the wake of write-downs related to the sub-prime crisis. If you think that the company may have finally found the bottom, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on ETFC.

After hitting a one-year high of $26.08 in last January, the stock hit a new one-year low of $2.08 yesterday. ETFC opened this morning at $2.60. So far today the stock has hit a low of $2.35 and a high of $2.60. As of 11:10, ETFC is trading at $2.42, up $0.17 (7.5%). The chart for ETFC looks bearish but improving, while S&P gives the stock a negative 2 STARS (out of 5) sell rating.

Continue reading E*Trade (ETFC) sells $3 billion in assets

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.