Filed under: Insiders

Shares of E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) are up more than 8% on news that insiders and directors have acquired $1.9 million worth of stock in recent days. But investors should be cautious.

The buying was in all probability coordinated to send a message to investors — and Wall Street is eating it up. But the reality is that $1.9 million is just not that much money in the context of the amount that the company top executives are paid.

The insider buying, in conjunction with the money E*Trade will spend on Super Bowl ads, looks like a pretty desperate and transparent effort by the company to convince investors and customers that the company is OK.

But think about it: if everything is so rosy, why isn’t Ameritrade (NASDAQ: AMTD) jumping in with an offer to acquire the company, something it had previously contemplated doing at a much higher price?

E*Trade executives appear to be hoping that if they can convince people everything is peachy, it will be. But that’s not a game you want to be playing.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 5:17 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.