Glitches Hit Trading Platforms Run By Bank of America, TD Ameritrade, Vanguard
November 24 2020 - 3:27PM
Dow Jones News
By Alexander Osipovich
Popular trading platforms run by Bank of America Corp., TD
Ameritrade Holding Corp. and Vanguard Group suffered glitches
Tuesday that rendered them inaccessible or slow to use, frustrating
investors on a landmark day for the U.S. stock market.
The snafus began as markets opened at 9:30 a.m. ET, before the
Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed 30000 for the first time,
according to the tech-service tracker Downdetector.
Users of Bank of America's Merrill Edge platform shared
screenshots indicating that its site was temporarily unavailable.
Mark Chockalingam, an investor in Sudbury, Mass., said he was
unable to log into Merrill Edge for about four hours.
Mr. Chockalingam said he was hoping to lock in a profit on call
options he recently bought on energy companies including Apache
Corp. and Pioneer Natural Resources Co., which had jumped in value
after a rally in the price of oil.
"If the brokerage is out, I'll be out thousands of dollars, even
though I made the right call," said Mr. Chockalingam, who runs a
supply-chain-management consulting firm. He was later able to
connect to Merrill Edge.
A Bank of America spokesman said on Tuesday afternoon: "All
systems are currently operating business as usual. Earlier, some
clients experienced a technical issue when trying to log into
MyMerrill and Merrill Edge."
Brokerage platforms run by TD Ameritrade -- including
thinkorswim, which is popular with day traders -- suffered
slowdowns at the start of the trading day, making it difficult to
use its website or submit orders, users said.
"This morning, clients experienced a few minutes of slowness
across our trading platforms at Market Open," said a spokeswoman
for TD Ameritrade, which was recently acquired by Charles Schwab
Corp. "The issue was quickly resolved."
Vanguard users also complained that the asset-management giant's
website wasn't working properly. At 10:03 a.m. ET, a Twitter user
named Coleslaw_84 tweeted, "website so slowwwwwwwwwww," spurring an
apologetic response from Vanguard.
A Vanguard spokeswoman confirmed that some clients may have
experienced difficulty navigating its website for individual
investors. "The issue is now resolved," she said. "We apologize for
the inconvenience and thank clients for their patience."
U.S. stocks rallied after President Trump signaled late Monday
that his administration would cooperate with President-elect Joe
Biden to allow the presidential transition to go forward, removing
a source of uncertainty that had dogged the market in recent
weeks.
That triggered a huge spike in trading volume. Some 2.9 billion
shares of New York Stock Exchange- and Nasdaq-listed stocks changed
hands during the first half hour of trading on Tuesday, more than
80% higher than the average full-day volume this year, according to
Dow Jones Market Data.
Similar volume spikes earlier this year have also caused
problems for popular trading platforms. On Nov. 9, glitches hit
Schwab, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade and Webull
Financial LLC during a surge in trading spurred by news that a
Covid-19 vaccine candidate bring developed by Pfizer Inc. and its
partner BioNTech SE was highly effective, according to early
data.
Write to Alexander Osipovich at
alexander.osipovich@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 24, 2020 16:12 ET (21:12 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2024 to May 2024
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2023 to May 2024