With markets surging due to positive vaccine news and electoral sentiment, investors and online merchants around the world have, once again, been frustrated by the inability to place deals on many of the major platforms in the UK, traders have reported problems with AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown and Fidelity. UK, while US clients Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Merrill Edge and Fidelity suffered the slowdown.
Interruptions and slowdowns during trade rushes are an unfortunate but common problem faced by clients of online trading platforms. The main reason for these interruptions continuing to bother the industry is that most brokers do not have the ability to register more than a small number of their clients at one time.
Another problem is the flow of data from the exchanges themselves, which can also be delayed when the number of requests explodes. “There were some exchange issues this morning with messages in the first few minutes that affected everyone,” Tom Sosnoff of Tastyworks tells us. He said his company’s platform hadn’t encountered any problems other than that
For those affected, it is best to clear the cache and cookies in the internet browser before trying to log in again
Traders in Europe flocked to Twitter to complain about their inability to trade as the FTSE 100 Index, a major UK index, appeared 468% Clients of AJ Bell YouInvest, Hargreaves Lansdown and UK subsidiary Fidelity expressed their frustration on Twitter He was the Social Media Manager at AJ Bell has been busy responding to complaints with a message, « Hey, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience our team understands this particular issue and they’re working hard to fix it Thanks »
Hargreaves Lansdown has posted a notice on its homepage that reads, “We are facing intermittent service issues at the moment. We hope they will be resolved as quickly as possible. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that might occur in the meantime.” Fidelity UK has also apologized on its homepage, saying: “ Some customers are facing intermittent problems logging into the system at the moment. We hope to solve these problems as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience
Likewise, residents woke up to news of a possible Pfizer vaccine, and many found that their brokerage accounts were inaccessible or that deal processing was so slow that they felt they had lost potential gains The period affected trades was more than 90 minutes after the markets opened.
Among the brokers affected based on reports published to DownDetector were Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Merrill Edge and Fidelity and Interactive Brokers said some clients also experienced a slowdown their clients spoke on social media.
A spokesman for Charles Schwab, via email, repeated the contents of their response on Twitter, “Some Schwab apps had technical issues early this morning that are now resolved We are now working on responding to customer questions as quickly as possible We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause To our customers, « Fidelity spokesperson confirms to us, » clients can access our systems online. Some may have experienced slower processing speeds for a short time in the open market due to extremely large volumes, but trades have been processed, « although many customers on Twitter say They couldn’t log in at all
Although Merrill Edge clients said they could not log in and trades were rejected, a spokesperson for Parent Bank of America said, « Like all financial firms this morning, we have been seeing higher than normal volume and we are currently not facing any problems. »
At Vanguard, a company spokesperson said, « We understand that some Vanguard customers may have had difficulty accessing their accounts on our systems. The issue has been resolved and we encourage customers to clear their internet cache and cookies and reuse their web browser before logging in again. »
TD Ameritrade’s response was helpful, admitting that “due to unprecedented volumes of activity, we encountered log-in issues across many of TD Ameritrade’s platforms,” specifically the TD Ameritrade mobile app and Thinkorswim web platform, other TD Ameritrade platforms suffered a significant slowdown while the issues persisted, he said A spokesperson for TD Ameritrade: “For the best experience, we recommend clients to use the TD Ameritrade web platform, the Thinkorswim mobile app or the Thinkorswim desktop app to access their account and execute trades. We apologize for the inconvenience and take the performance and reliability of our trading platforms very seriously” as of 1 pm: 35 PM ET, issue resolved and clients have access to all TD Ameritrade platforms as normal
An Interactive Brokers spokesperson notes, « We are not aware of any outages however, there has been some slowdown in some, but not all, of our platforms we are dealing with. We recommend clients to use the professional-grade Trader workstation during this period. »
At Robinhood, a company spokesperson said, “This morning, despite the historic traffic, Robinhood systems have been in operation. Our engineering teams have worked hard to strengthen our infrastructure, improve reliability, and increase capacity.” Some issues were reported to DownDetector, but they were less significant. From Robinhood’s past interruptions this is a big step forward for the company
Hargreaves Lansdown, Stock, Pfizer, Stock market, Vaccine
World News – GB – Online brokers struggle with service failures as markets soar
SOURCE: https://www.w24news.com
