Earnings are rolling in on this fine Tuesday morning, with many companies reporting. One of those is TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ: AMTD), which stepped into the earnings spotlight and reported fourth-quarter earnings of 26 cents per share, topping the consensus estimate by four cents per share.

Quarterly revenue came in at $657.9 million, which is 1.3% better than a year ago. Looking ahead, the online brokerage forecast full-year 2010 earnings to come in between $1.10 and $1.40 per share. The consensus estimate for fiscal 2010 is $1.05, so the shares could see a bit of a boost on the forecast. AMTD's quarterly earnings fell 8.8% compared to a year earlier, but the company did post new highs in average client trades per day and new net assets.

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.

If there is a silver lining in the disaster that has been investing in the markets in 2008, it's that increases in volatility made it possible to generate huge returns moving in and out of stocks in a very short period of time.

Day trading had all but disappeared after the dot-com crash. And while the strategy is making a comeback in a major way this year, investors have yet to catch on.

Think about it for a moment. What businesses were at the forefront of this investment strategy?

Discount online brokers, led by E*Trade Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC), were some of the biggest winners during the boom in day trading.

With everyone and their mother trading stock tips in the 1990s, brokers made increases in customer accounts and trading commissions that led to big profits.

Now, with fertile ground for day trading back in play, are the discount brokers worth owning in this environment?

Well, one would think that now would be an excellent time to be owning the discount broker stocks, but that hasn't borne itself out as of yet. What gives?

Professional investors like to use conference call transcripts as a valuable tool in their research toolbox. These are transcribed versions of an actual conference call, usually held publicly over the phone. Instead of listening to the full call, investors can get their hands on these things and read them at their leisure. They're generally full of information asked by both analysts and professional investors.

Beyond the jargon, they're just really useful.

So, what did TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ: AMTD) have to say recently about ailing rival, E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC)?

Parsing the transcript, here are a few nuggets:

Prashant Bhatia - Citigroup Global Markets

Okay, and then, just finally, so far in January, the asset intake from E*Trade, is that still running at elevated levels versus historical trends and can you share any TFA data there versus history?

Joe Moglia, CEO, Ameritrade

I think again, for you to have clarity, I think it is appropriate for me to share that, we are not going to give specific numbers, but the numbers that we continue to see with regards to the inflow from them is significantly higher than anything we have ever seen historically.

It's not easy to top a present like TheStreet.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSCM), but my next holiday stock pick does just that. I give you investor education cum brokerage firm INVESTools Inc. (Nasdaq: SWIM). It's a pretty cool business model that aims to teach people to invest via seminars, getting some juicy upfront fees and reaping the rewards over time through commissions and fees, if they are successful in their teachings.

Besides having a booming stock – which, after a nasty 50% mid-year drop, this week is breaking out to new all-time highs – an incredible trading platform that I use for my own trading and big time investors known for discovering undervalued smallcap stocks, this company has some serious growth. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find another company in the finance arena with numbers that are even in the same ballpark.