E*TRADE Review: Morgan Stanley's Muscle Behind a Veteran Broker
E*TRADE is one of the original online brokerages, and now it's got Morgan Stanley's backing. That matters. Since the 2020 acquisition, E*TRADE has quietly become something more than the scrappy trading platform that ran those famous baby commercials — it's now a full-service financial hub with banking, investing, managed portfolios, and retirement planning all under one roof. The headline numbers are competitive: $0 commissions on stocks and ETFs, $0.65 options contracts (dropping to $0.50 for active traders), and no account minimums on standard brokerage accounts. They've also layered in Morgan Stanley Private Bank products — a Premium Savings Account paying 3.75% APY and checking accounts with worldwide ATM fee refunds. For someone who wants investing and banking in one place, that's genuinely useful. But "full-service" can also mean "sprawling and complicated." E*TRADE offers so many account types and platforms that newcomers might feel overwhelmed. And some fees — margin rates, OTC stock commissions, broker-assisted trades — are higher than you'd find at Fidelity or Schwab. Let's break it all down.