E-Trade Planning to Purchase Dollar-Amount Investment Firm

E-Trade Group Inc., the second-biggest online broker, said Monday that it has agreed to buy San Francisco-based Electronic Investing Corp., which lets clients build portfolios through dollar-amount investments.

Closely held Electronic Investing, which does business as EInvesting, allows investors to buy securities in dollar denominations rather than by shares. Menlo Park, Calif.-based E-Trade said it would offer the product to its 3 million account holders as well as its corporate and financial advisor clients.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Other firms offer investors new ways to build their own baskets of stocks, including Vienna, Va.-based FolioFn Inc., started by former Securities and Exchange Commission member Steven Wallman and backed by mutual fund company American Century and venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

E-Trade is expected to report fiscal third-quarter earnings Wednesday. Its shares fell 63 cents to close at $19.13 in Nasdaq trading on Monday.