Worked example
Practising on E*TRADE's numbers
This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that E*TRADE publishes — a spread, a ladder of account types and a list of licences — and turn each of them into something you can do arithmetic with. By the end you should be able to repeat the whole exercise on any firm you come across, which is the actual skill being taught.
The figures we are working from
Nothing below is our estimate. Where a firm has not published something, or we could not read it on a source we trust, the box says so instead of guessing — a habit worth copying when you build your own broker notes.
Exercise one — turn the spread into money
Nothing to compute here
E*TRADE does not publish a EUR/USD spread we were able to verify, so there is no honest arithmetic to do on this page. Do not substitute a number you read on a comparison site: an unverified spread quietly becomes an unverified cost, and then an unverified plan. Use one of the other examples on the practice index for this exercise and come back to this file for the account ladder below.
Exercise two — read the account ladder
Account tiers are a pricing structure dressed as a status ladder. E*TRADE offers 1 rung. Read it as a question — what does it ask of me, and what does it give back? — rather than as a prize to climb towards.
- Brokerage accountThe entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
Account names as published: Brokerage account. Platforms listed: Proprietary web platform, Proprietary desktop platform.
Exercise three — what this licence list means for you
A long licence list is not automatically a good sign. What matters to a beginner is a narrower question: which entity would hold my money, and who supervises that entity? Those are often not the same as the impressive name at the top of the list. Here are E*TRADE's lines, each with a plain reading.
| Regulator | Entity on the register | Number | What that means for a beginner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (US) · US | entity not examined | 149777 | a top-tier regulator: compensation scheme, capital rules and a public register you can search yourself |
How to use that table
1 of these lines is top-tier, held by entity not examined. If you are onboarded to a different entity than those, the protections attached to the top-tier line are not yours, however prominently the regulator's initials appear in the marketing.
The record behind these numbers
- E*TRADE: deposit as advertised by the firm, 2026-10 (https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/our-accounts/brokerage-account)
- E*TRADE: software as advertised by the firm, 2026-10 (https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/our-accounts/brokerage-account)
Run the same exercise on another firm
pipdojo.com does not rank brokers, does not award badges and does not tell you where to open an account. This page exists so the arithmetic you learn in the curriculum has real numbers to bite on.