E-Trade (stylized as E*TRADE)[2] is an investment brokerage and electronic trading platform that operates as a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley.
History
In 1982, physicist William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb founded TradePlus in Palo Alto, California, with $15,000 in capital. In 1983, it launched its first trade via a Compuserve network. In 1992, Porter and Newcomb founded E-Trade and made electronic trading available to individual investors.[3]
On August 16, 1996, the company (by then known as the E-Trade Financial Corporation) became a public company via an initial public offering. The company sold 5,665,000 shares of its common stock for $10.50 per share under the stock ticker "ETFC" on the NASDAQ stock exchange.[4] The company figured prominently in the