Users are reporting that trading platforms at major US brokerage firms were down during early morning trading that saw the three main indexes hovering near record highs.
Frustrating investors looking to position their portfolios on August’s last trading day, Robinhood, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and Vanguard Group said they had technical issues ranging from delays in order updates to keeping clients away from their accounts and trades. Similar to previous outages, traders took to social media to criticize their respective platform, threatening to switch their current broker.
Many clients are experiencing high levels of slowness on the TD Ameritrade web platforms and the TD Ameritrade mobile app. We are working to address the issue as quickly as possible. This issue does not impact the @thinkorswim desktop or the @thinkorswim mobile app.
— TD Ameritrade (@TDAmeritrade) August 31, 2020
Charles Schwab also said due to a technical issue, https://Schwab.com may be intermittently inaccessible for some clients. “We are working to restore service as quickly as possible. Hold times may be longer than usual. We apologize for any inconvenience,” they added two hours ago.
“We understand that some clients are having difficulty accessing their accounts on our site. Our team is working to resolve this as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience,” Vanguard explained on Twitter. They said it was investigating and working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Traders who said they were unable to place orders around the recent market Volatility lashed out at these firms on Reddit and Twitter.
This is insane! @TDAmeritrade
You're damn right I'm pissed. This is unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/uCvsRpv3xG — electricalenginerdⓋ (@elec_enginerd) August 31, 2020
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.
At 4:11PM GMT, Robinhood said in an additional statement that the issue had been identified and that a fix was implemented.
This morning, some customers were experiencing issues with delayed order status updates. We’ve resolved the issue and Robinhood is operational. We apologize and thank you for your patience.
— Robinhood Help (@AskRobinhood) August 31, 2020
Although Robinhood provided few specifics, there were widespread complaints from customers who could not get into their accounts online. Complaints also 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.
