US traders were foiled, yet again, by an inability to place or close trades on many trading platforms during early morning trading. Up until this moment, users at Robinhood and Interactive Brokers are reporting they have technical issues ranging from delays in order updates to being prevented from accessing their accounts and trades.
Interactive Brokers said due to a technical issue, clients may be unable to connect through their web, mobile, and desktop trading platforms.
The discount brokerage told its clients in a separate email that they experienced 'a significant failure' in multiple segments of a highly resilient data storage system. IBKR added that they engaged the vendor for analysis and recovery, and independently they are rerouting modules of the overall brokerage system to backup recovery centers.
“We recognize the dislocation this has caused to our clients, and express our apologies. Based on the current situation, we expect a prompt recovery, and will of course, keep interested parties informed in a timely manner," the company added.
Elsewhere, Robinhood’s status page shows 'All Systems Operational'. But, according to Downdetector app, which offers real-time status and uptime monitoring for over 3,000 services, many of Robinhood users are experiencing connection problems that involved the server connection.
Although Robinhood did not provide any specifics on its website or social accounts, there were widespread complaints from customers who could not get into their accounts online. Additionally, complaints included either slowness or lack of access to certain features, as well as problems trading some asset classes on the no-fee app. Others said they could not see their account balances.
Almost all major US brokers had difficulty just keeping their service online during the financial turmoil largely driven by Coronavirus concerns. They often blamed the crashes on a steer trading volume and new account sign-ups, promising to improve their infrastructure and investing in additional redundancies.
Similar to previous outages, traders took to social media to criticize their respective platform, threatening to switch their current broker.
