E-Trade Financial (ETFC) said it decided to exit the retail mortgage origination business, its last remaining loan origination channel, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Friday. The company said it will partner with a third party company to provide customers access to real estate loans after it exits the business.

Vasco Data Securities (VDSI) announced today that the leading
Middle Eastern bank Arab Bank will enhance the security of its
new Internet Banking Service with VASCO's Digipass GO 3 and
VACMAN Controller. This comes just after Vasco's stock rose
12.5% just yesterday. Today it is trading up another
4%, quite the gain in just two days!

Vasco Data Securities (VDSI) reported today that they had landed the second large contract in as many weeks. The latest contract is with Swedbank, the leading bank in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Swedbank also operates in in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Western Russia, Luxembourg, Ukraine, US, China and Japan.

This stock has been in a downward spiral since reporting it's last earnings three months ago and any new investors to this stock must be sweating bullets. Needless to say, if you didn't buy all at once this could be considered an opportunity. I personally still believe they have a lot of long-term value, and I will actually be adding to my position at these levels.

During the last conference call Vasco did reaffirm their full year guidance for revenue growth, gross margins and operating margins, so things from their standpoint appear to be very healthy. The real question is will the banking crisis hurt Vasco's bottom line?