Quick Take: Bad Day for E*Trade

Seems like E*Trade (Nasdaq: ETFC) has more problems than not knowing what it's doing in the mortgage business. Shortly after Helicopter Ben Bernanke and the Fed sprinkled magic fairy dust (i.e. cheap money) on the markets so that homebuilders, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street bankers could have a shot at salvaging their annual bonuses, E*Trade's Web site stopped responding. It gave me this bogus error message: "Service Temporarily Unavailable. The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."

And it just kept repeating that message. For several minutes. More than enough time for me to write this. What's a guy who wants to sell into the irrational exuberance supposed to do? Seems like finding an online broker that can handle high-volume days might be a good place to start.