I never experienced any problem, even after etrade
acquired them. Only issue is that they have no
local branches. Anyways it's always good to split your money
among several brokers. But I believe your problem with
Etrade is not wide-spread, they are an OK broker
but not as great as Brown.
Also you probably want to open a futures account so
you can trade the e-minis and single stock futures and
gain access to many other financial instruments.
I won't touch semis at this point. I was wrong to predict
S&P would go down in 2005 but the recommendation on Ebay
when it was around 32 was dead on.
2006 will be a much more volatile, interesting and profitable year than 05 and 04. Wait and be ready to pounce.
Someone once said, "when you are making money, you are
not busy"
