E*Trade Sells $3B More in MBS, Munis

E*Trade Financial -- which is undergoing a wrenching restructuring -- said Wednesday that it has sold an additional $3 billion worth of bonds, including mortgage-backed securities and municipals. The bank/online brokerage firm said it took a $5 million loss on the sales which occurred in separate transactions over the past several weeks. (In November it sold $3 billion in asset-backed securities.) The New York-based E*Trade also said its home equity portfolio is continuing to "run off as anticipated" and totaled just under $12 billion in loans at year's end. Early in the fall, E*Trade closed its wholesale residential unit and booked a $245 million charge against earnings because of bad home equity loans and what it called a "deterioration in the mortgage market."