An unsolicited trade on ETRADE is any order you place on your own, without a recommendation from a broker or advisor. ETRADE marks it that way in its systems because the platform is largely self-directed, so almost every retail trade placed through the app or website gets tagged unsolicited by default.
TL;DR
An unsolicited trade means you decided to buy or sell, not your broker. E*TRADE tags nearly all self-directed online orders this way.
Solicited trades happen when a licensed advisor recommends the trade and carries fiduciary or suitability responsibility for it.
The label matters most in a dispute. FINRA's 2018 exam findings flagged brokers who mismark trades to dodge suitability obligations.
If you place your own orders through ETRADE's app, web platform, or Power ETRADE, expect every one of them logged as unsolicited.
Keeping your own trade log outside the brokerage record is the only way to prove intent if a dispute ever comes up.
Why this matters
The solicited/unsolicited tag is not cosmetic. It defines who owns responsibility for the trade. A solicited trade puts suitability and fiduciary duty on the advisor who recommended it. An unsolicited trade puts that responsibility mostly on you, since you made the call. E*TRADE, like every major discount broker, defaults almost all self-directed retail activity to unsolicited because there is no human advisor recommending the position.
That distinction becomes important in exactly two situations: a regulatory or arbitration dispute over a loss, and account-level compliance reviews on options or margin approvals. Outside of those, the tag mostly sits quietly in your trade confirmations and account history.
How the unsolicited tag actually gets applied on E*TRADE
ETRADE's retail platform, including the standard web interface, the mobile app, and Power ETRADE, is self-directed. There is no broker on the other end reviewing and recommending your order before it fills. Because of that structure, every order you enter yourself gets classified as unsolicited by default, whether it is a stock buy, an options spread, or a futures trade.
You will only see a "solicited" tag if you worked with an ETRADE-affiliated financial advisor (through Morgan Stanley's wealth management arm, since ETRADE is part of Morgan Stanley) who actually recommended the specific transaction, documented it, and placed or approved it on your behalf. For the vast majority of retail account holders trading through the self-directed platform, that scenario never applies.
What "unsolicited" changes about your rights
1. Suitability obligations shrink but do not disappear. A broker facilitating an unsolicited order still has order-execution and best-execution duties. What drops away is the suitability review that applies to a recommended trade. If nobody recommended the trade, nobody can be held to "was this appropriate for this investor" the same way.
2. Dispute leverage changes. In FINRA arbitration, a solicited trade that loses money gives the investor a stronger claim, because the broker recommended it and had a duty to vet it against your objectives and risk tolerance. An unsolicited trade removes most of that leverage, since the paper trail shows you initiated it.
3. Mismarking is a known problem, not a theoretical one. FINRA's 2018 Examination Findings Report specifically called out firms and representatives who marked trades unsolicited when they were not, often to sidestep suitability review or hide unauthorized activity in a client's account. If you ever see a trade in your ETRADE history marked unsolicited that you did not place or approve, that is worth escalating immediately, first to ETRADE's compliance desk and then to FINRA if it is not resolved.
4. Options and margin approval reviews still happen. Even though your day-to-day trades are unsolicited, E*TRADE still gates access to higher options tiers, margin, and futures based on your stated experience and net worth. The unsolicited label does not exempt you from those account-level suitability gates when you first request the access.
What to check if you see "unsolicited" on a trade confirmation
Confirm you actually placed it. Pull up your order history and match timestamps, ticker, size, and price against your own memory or your trading journal. If it does not match anything you entered, that is the first sign something is wrong.
Screenshot the confirmation. Trade confirmations and account statements are your primary evidence in any dispute. Save them outside the platform, not just in your inbox.
Cross-check against your own log. A trading journal that timestamps every order you place independently of the broker is the cleanest way to prove intent later. This is exactly the gap a tool like RizeTrade closes: when you import your E*TRADE executions into a journal, you get an independent record of what you actually decided to do, separate from however the broker's back office classified it.
Escalate mismarked trades fast. If a trade shows unsolicited but you never placed it, or shows solicited when nobody recommended it, contact E*TRADE support in writing and keep the reference number. Waiting months to raise it weakens any later claim.
The trap: relying only on the broker's record
Brokers keep their own version of events, and that version is not always complete or accurate, especially across a busy trading day with dozens of executions across stocks, options, and futures. If a dispute ever comes down to "did you place this trade or did someone else," the broker's internal tag is only one data point. A separate, timestamped trading journal that logs every fill as you place it, independent of how E*TRADE's system classifies it, is the stronger evidence. Traders running high volume across multiple account types are the ones most exposed here, since a single mismarked order is easy to miss inside hundreds of monthly executions.