The title seemed catchy and at least the bulk of this entry is about TD Ameritrade. Being a fan of the TV show "Law and Order" I feel that Ameritrade has a good marketing campaign. Many don't though.

TD stands for Toronto Dominion or something close to that. Canadian investment banking group; big money, like HSBC is Hong Kong Shanghai Banking group, or something close to that (with foreign companies who knows what the acronym names really are with SA instead of NA or Inc).

Are people serious that Schwab or E-Trade would seriously consider that option as viable? Have hedge fund managers turned into morons (doubt it)? I was going for sushi the other day (i.e. the title of this article) and I saw a building with TD Ameritrade across the street from a Schwab and I had some thoughts.

In retail banking a company like Bank of America takes over a little bank or credit union for the leases (the people are nice to get with their relationships too), but in the end it is the buildings and the locations and the safe deposit box clients which like having good locations to go take the rings out of the vault.

In the self-service and online markets where these E-Trade and TD Ameritrade, among others, compete it isn't location they are after so much as clients or economy of scale. Schwab and E-Trade can steal clients all day by offering free or nearly free trades, so it wouldn't be about the client stealing (they can steal from clients on their own). Economy of Scale wouldn't really help either Schwab or E-Trade that much either when considering a TD merger (do the math, argue about this if you want but I have a few spreadsheets if you really want to argue excessively).

The groups that really should buy TD Ameritrade are Union Bank of California (UB) or City National Bank (CYN) or SunTrust Banks (STI). These are large but still mainly regional banks that would like to break into the national scene. Neither has a huge number of online trading clients; comparatively. TD Ameritrade has a full range of clients that could benefit from cross-sell opportunities for products such as lending, trust services, etc.

The sushi was good, I want to remind you that I don't own any of these stocks though mutual funds I own might and I am too lazy to check, see Rule Number 1 of my blog for any questions about this.

Wouldn't you? Anything with Gold in the name has to be better, doesn't it?

Kinder Morgan, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley; all great companies, but without that catchy 'gold' sound they just don't seem to have that bling. Who is that Morgan guy anyway? (If you don't know the answer to that please don't post letting me know who it is after you figure it out).

Bank of New York, Bank of America, Bank of La Jolla; who wants to work for a bank? It seems that MBA's do as long as there is the word 'gold' in the name.

For those of you that think this is all fun and typing I just lost a really funny seven (7) page blog entry by hitting a dumb button. Give us a break once in a while.