E*Trade Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC) has garnered three upgrades in as many days this week. On Monday, Fox-Pitt upped the equity from Underperform to In Line, while FBR on Tuesday raised its opinion from Underperform to Outperform. Raymond James rounded out the trifecta on Wednesday, hiking its rating on ETFC from Underperform to Market Perform.

Judging by this rush of analyst love, Wall Street seems to think the worst is over for E*Trade. However, most of this week's commentary falls under the category of "damning with faint praise." For example, Fox-Pitt said they now believe ETFC is more likely to be acquired by another firm than to file bankruptcy, and Raymond James observed that the stock has "limited downside" -- hardly a bold statement for an equity that settled Wednesday at $1.23.

Today was one of those strange days where stocks were gapping up on overseas market strength, but little domestic news. There were no economic numbers today, and the group in focus today was all the technology news.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,539.73 -15.87 (-0.19%)
S&P 500 921.23 +2.86 (0.31%)
Nasdaq 1,827.47 +19.75 (1.09%)

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Today had all the earmarks in line for another solid day of sell-offs, yet the markets held ground considering the tone this morning. The good news was low inflation, the lowest in over 50 years.

But agriculture stocks were hammered on overseas competitive news about weak pricing and demand. Then came a banking downgrade from the S&P playing catch-up. Despite the mixed performance at the end of the day, this felt like a win. Here are the unofficial closing bell levels:

DJIA: 8,497.18 (-7.49)
S&P 500: 910. 71 (-1.26)
NASDAQ: 1,808.06 (+11.88)

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The shares of E*Trade Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC) took a dive this morning after the online brokerage house announced plans to boost its balance sheet. The company will sell $400 million in common stock, and launch a debt exchange worth more than $1 billion. In a statement, E*Trade said its capital-raising initiatives "will significantly reduce the company's debt service burden."

Back in April, the cash-strapped brokerage was instructed by the Office of Thrift Supervision to quickly raise new capital and reduce its leverage. Today's newly announced share offering and debt swap are expected to bring in at least $1.2 billion, although the transactions are expected to dilute the investments of current ETFC shareholders by about 40%.

The market spent the day as it has many a Friday in the summer: slowing going no where.

The University of Michigan/Reuters consumer sentiment index showed a very modest increase in June up to 69, from 68.7 in May. The same survey showed that expectations for six months from now actually dropped.

Oil and gas prices still dominated the headlines. Oil still hovers around $72 and the average price of gas rose for the 45th consecutive day to $2.63. The has to rattle consumers who have precious little discretionary income as it is.

Today marked intra-day 2009 for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, although these might not have closed on the highs for the year. Also that won't be known until the formal 4:30-ish closing reset adjustment. This came on the heels of slightly less-bad jobs data and on some confusing retail gains. Unlike earlier Treasury auctions, today's 30-year Treasury Bond auction was a help to the markets as yields reached a high enough level that investors jumped in. Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,770.92 +31.90 (0.37%)
S&P 500 944.88 +5.73 (0.61%)
Nasdaq 1,862.37 +9.29 (0.50%)

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Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE: BMY) Q1 profit fell despite strong sales of Plavix and Abilify.
• Check Point Software Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: CHKP) was downgraded based on its guidance.
• Domino's Pizza Inc. (NYSE: DPZ) strong Q1 results were boosted by early debt retirement.
• DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. (NYSE: DWA) strong Q1 results were driven by Madagascar 2.
• Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ENDP) Q1 results led to an analyst's downgrade.
• E*Trade Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC) widened its Q1 loss, sending shares sharply lower.

Today was one of those strange rally days that had very little to do with earnings. The GDP data was much worse than estimates on the surface, but there was a positive twist to it on spending and inventories are low enough that this could mark the back-side of the crest.

The FOMC voted to keep rates steady at 0.00 to 0.25 percent, but even the FOMC sounded more positive on the economic outlook. Here are the unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,185.73 +168.78 (2.11%)
S&P 500 873.64 +18.48 (2.16%)
Nasdaq 1,711.94 +38.13 (2.28%)

Top Analyst Upgrades
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I know, I know. You look at the recent performace of E*Trade's (NASDAQ: ETFC) shares and you say to yourself, man, I've got to play this stock and make some return! Sure, E*Trade shares have doubled since the first of the year. But then the earnings hit the fan, my trading friends, and that double suddenly disappeared.

The brokerage reported a Q1 loss that was wider than the year-ago number. E*Trade lost 41 cents per share versus a loss of 20 cents per share in 2008. According to this source, that was a penny worse than what Wall Street was bracing itself for.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer is seeing signs of a coming boom, but he's still being cautious here.

If you had to define the early cycle, if you had to outline what stocks should be soaring coming out of a recession into a boom and which ones should be faltering, you would have to say the action in this market in the last month is the quintessential behavioral pattern.

What are the components of the early cycle? First, it's the homebuilders. As is typical coming out of a recession, the stocks precede the bottom of housing. That's exactly what's happening with the lowest permits and highest affordability and best mortgage rates and massive inventory. Everywhere, except on Wall Street reporting, the bottom is bursting out. When you read the lead story in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, and it is all about the thousands of prospective homebuyers heading south to pick up condos and homes for half of what they were worth two years ago -- or even less -- and you know that virtually no one has broken ground in the Sunshine State in a year, you can bet that the bottom's actually behind us. This housing market has wiped out all but the most stable private builders and even the public ones are merging as we know from Pulte (NYSE: PHM) (Cramer's Take) and Centex (NYSE: CTX) (Cramer's Take). So, in the next cycle, you can see some profitability developing year over year even though the new homes don't have much margin because the foreclosed homes next door are going for a song. And don't believe this won't change the dynamic of future foreclosures. In most areas, rent is higher than the interest on mortgages, so you will find that second or third job needed to stay in your home. The incentive structure's radically different than a year ago.

In his Stellar Stocks Alert, newsletter advisor Richard Schmidt sees long-term opportunity in select brokerage stocks. Here, he looks at Charles Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) and E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC).

"Some of the strongest financials in the world have lost 60%, 70%, even up to 90% or more of their value in the last year. Shares of Charles Schwab have come down too. But the stock has lost less than 50%, at its worst.

"Most of that has come since October. We had hoped the stock would bottom. But the stock continued to drop through support, meaning the downtrend is still in place. We may eventually see it go down by more than 50%.

Discount broker E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) will run its famous "talking baby" TV ad during the Superbowl. It won't help the failing company. The stock is still a "sell."

E*Trade shares change hands at $1.18. That is down from a 52-week high of $5.79. For the fourth quarter of last year, the company reported a net loss of $276 million, or $0.50 per share. And, E*Trade's operating interest income, a key measurement of its health, keeps dropping. The firm said it had applied for money from the TARP but admitted there was no guarantee it would be successful in securing that funding.

E Trade Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: ETFC), which competes with TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: AMTD) and Charles Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW), is doing splendidly today. As I write this, the stock is up well over 15%. But I would not touch this one with a ten-foot pole, as they say.

According to this article, E*Trade reported a quarterly loss on Tuesday of $0.50 per share. While that was a lot better than the $3.98 per-share loss reported in last year's Q4, it wasn't enough to beat expectations. Wall Street was hoping for a loss of $0.24 per share. E*Trade said in its press release that daily average revenue trades increased 18% and that 97,000 new accounts were captured. While both of those stats are impressive to a certain degree, an investor must keep in mind that E*Trade is a complicated story. The company really screwed itself by exposing its shareholders to so much financial risk; sure, that might be hindsight now, but it nevertheless is true. And with all the loan provisions and all the issues with the company's involvement with applying for the government's TARP initiative, etc., I can tell you that I absolutely would not want to play around with this stock.

After the stock market meltdown of 2008, Wall Street brokerages aren't anyone's favorites in 2009.

But some customers said they're still happy with their online broker.

A December ChangeWave survey of 3,051 consumers found that despite the extremely difficult financial market, two online brokerages still capture high customer satisfaction ratings -- Charles Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) and archrival, Scottrade.

Trillions of dollars have been introduced into the world economy since last July, when I thought it would be interesting to jump in and pick stocks prior to the carnage in the financial sector taking complete hold.

For the past eight months our government has been taking over financial institutions, absorbing debt, lowering interest rates, nationalizing some private companies, investing in others, and rebating taxes through stimulus packages to increase liquidity and spending. The Federal Reserve has essentially dropped the interest to zero.

The government was the last to announce that we are in a recession. Well, duh! However, recession or not the world is still open for business although less of it. Gold is down 30% from it's highs and oil having totally collapsed from $147 a barrel at the time of the original story to the low $30's now.

The original story was Serious Money: Tempting fate with 10 financials -- buying into a pool of financial stocks at a time when these stocks went unloved by all.

Eight of the ten financial stocks I wrote about are down or out at this point. When I last reported, the portfolio was losing 47% but it has sunk to new lows now standing at a loss of 58.56%. This compares to a drop in the S&P 500 of 29% or half the loss.

There are many analysts suggesting that we finally have arrived at the time to invest in financial stocks. Perhaps that is true, but do you invest in the downtrodden or the blue chips?