Robinhood Markets Inc.’s brokerage website experienced technical issues Monday with some customers unable to make trades on a day when the market was rebounding from last week’s rout.
A system-wide failure began as the U.S. markets opened and continued through midday. At 11:18 a.m. New York time, the company posted a statement on the website saying “the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” As of 1:20 p.m., access had not yet been restored.
Our system is experiencing downtime issues that are affecting all functionalities on our platform. We are aware of the issue and are working to have all systems up and running as soon as we can. We’re so sorry this is happening!
— Robinhood Help (@AskRobinhood) March 2, 2020
Clients blasted the closely held company on social media. “One of the most anticipated trading days and your service is down at market open,” one user wrote. Another user said: “What is going on — I can’t do any trades — you will lose me as customer going forward. This is ridiculous.”
Downdetector, a website that tracks real-time outages online, reported the issue at the market open.
U.S. stocks surged on Monday as investors gained confidence that the Federal Reserve could intervene to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus. Last week, the S&P 500 Index suffered the worst week for the benchmark since 2008.
During last week’s market decline Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab Corp. customers experienced some technical issues. Those were quickly repaired.
Robinhood, based in Menlo Park, California, primarily serves customers who are just getting started as investors.
— Julie Verhage and Annie Massa (Bloomberg)
