As global fears sparked a massive sell-off in stocks and cryptocurrencies on Monday, investors were left frustrated by outages at major brokerages including Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments.
Reuters reports that online services at Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments experienced significant issues on Monday, leaving many users unable to log into their accounts during a tumultuous trading session. The outages coincided with a day of heightened market volatility, as investors dumped risky assets amidst growing concerns about a potential U.S. recession.
Wall Street’s main indexes plummeted on Monday, driven by a combination of weak economic data, disappointing second-quarter earnings from technology giants, and escalating geopolitical tensions. The confluence of these factors not only revived recession fears but also dampened hopes for a soft landing of the economy.
According to outage tracking website Downdetector.com, Schwab was down for more than 3,400 users, while outage reports on Fidelity peaked at over 3,500. Vanguard also saw nearly 2,500 outage reports on the website. However, the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Typically, outage reports on Down Detector represent much larger outages, since only a small minority will actually report such outages to the site.
While both Schwab and Fidelity confirmed that some users were experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts, they did not provide further details on the cause of the outages. Such technical problems can sometimes be triggered by periods of extreme market volatility, raising questions about the capacity of brokerages to handle high trading volumes.
Fidelity later announced that it had resolved the issue, providing some relief to affected investors. Earlier in the day, Robinhood Markets, a popular platform among retail investors, also reported a pause in its overnight trading service, which allows users to trade select stocks and exchange-traded funds 24 hours a day. The company later stated that it had resumed the service.
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