Traders struggled to sell or buy due to service disruptions.
Thousands of frustrated online brokerage users faced service disruptions amid a market selloff for the third consecutive trading session, according to data from the outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
At the start of the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange (9:30 a.m. EST) on Aug. 5, there were as many as 15,000 reports of outages on the Charles Schwab platform. Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Vanguard experienced between 1,750 and 3,600 users reporting disruptions at the peak of the downtime.
Outage reports were steadily decreasing throughout the trading day.
“We recognize some investors are experiencing delays when logging in to their accounts,” Vanguard wrote in a now-deleted post on X. “We are working diligently to restore functionality and apologize for any inconvenience.”
Robinhood Markets, a popular platform for retail traders, confirmed that it resumed overnight trading following a temporary suspension. The outlet launched a 24-hour market service in May 2023, allowing investors to trade anytime from midnight (UTC) on Sunday to midnight on Friday.
Users commonly reported being unable to log into their accounts, while others said they could only stay in their accounts for a short time before being kicked out.
The incidents occurred at a time when global financial markets, including the leading U.S. benchmark indexes, are experiencing a widespread rout.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed as much as 1,100 points on Monday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index plunged about 3 percent, and the S&P 500 declined roughly 2.5 percent.
Since July 16, the S&P 500 has erased more than $2 trillion of market cap, equaling $357 billion per trading day, according to data calculated by The Kobeissi Letter.
U.S. Treasury yields, energy commodities, the metals market, and cryptocurrencies were also swimming in red ink.
During extreme volatility in the financial markets, digital trading platforms can sometimes experience technical problems since there are massive volumes of retail investors executing buy-and-sell trades.
The Epoch Times reached out to the impacted companies for comment.
What Happened?
The U.S. stock market began its recent downturn on August 1 when the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI)—a gauge of the sector’s direction—deepened into contraction territory.
Economic and market conditions in Japan also contributed to weakness in the global financial markets.
The latest developments have initiated calls for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates immediately and aggressively at the final three meetings of 2024.
“If the crater in markets continues up to the Fed’s September meeting, it’s likely the Fed’s rescue will start with a 50 or even 75 basis point move down,” Jeff Klingelhofer, co-head of investments at Thornburg Investment Management, told The Epoch Times via email.
“Many data points will either confirm or question if this is a recession, and if so, how deep it is. If the data points significantly more toward the likelihood of a recession at the September meeting, then the Fed should be concerned with inflation missing because it’s below 2% and unemployment is moving up. The Fed will believe their cutting cycle will cushion the fall.”
“The fed funds rate right now should be somewhere between 3.5% and 4%,” Siegel added.