Funds Chief Exits E-Trade Over Strategy

Call it bye and hold.

E-Trade Group Inc.’s mutual funds chief resigned Friday, saying his belief in buying and holding stocks and funds didn’t match the company’s strategy of catering to frequent traders.

An Internet brokerage likes to trade a lot--who knew?

Brian Murray, a vice president at the Menlo Park, Calif., company, will leave March 1 to help start a venture capital firm and possibly an online financial services company.

E-Trade has six of its own name-brand funds with $200 million in assets, another two funds about to be launched, and $1.6 billion in its fund supermarket.

“E-Trade is really an active trader shop,” Murray said. “It just wasn’t a good fit anymore.”

He added: “When the market heads south, buying and holding IBM for six years, or buying and holding a mutual fund--that’s going to look pretty sexy.”

Murray said he is reviewing business plans. In the meantime he will run Scobie’s, the sports bar he owns in Alameda, Calif.

Murray takes buy and hold to heart: His home e-mail address is “bogleboy” in tribute to Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle Sr., a legendary long-term investor. “I think he walks on water,” he said.