Some brokerages platforms momentarily experienced outages and gummy trading on Monday as stocks reached fresh all-time highs following positive vaccine developments and clarity on the presidential race projected to be won by former Vice President Joe Biden.
The flurry in transactions appeared to overwhelm the retail trading platforms and websites as individual investors rushed to check their accounts or place trades.
According to consumer-technology service tracker Downdetector, users early Monday were having trouble logging into their accounts on TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab Corp.
The frenzied activity comes after Pfizer and BioNTech reported their COVID-19 vaccine candidate was 90% effective based on an analysis of interim results.
Schwab
SCHW,
said in a tweet that users may have difficulty accessing the brokerage’s website.
A TD Ameritrade spokeswoman said users may experience “slowness” on their website and mobile platforms due to heavy trading volume. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman from Interactive Brokers Group
IBKR,
said there had been delays on some, but not all, of their trading platforms.
Some of those issues were being resolved by the brokerages as the session progressed.
Stocks surged out of the gate at the start of on Monday to start the week. The S&P 500
SPX,
and Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
ran up to new intraday peaks at the opening bell.
Brokerage stocks also reaped gains. Shares of Schwab, which also owns TD Ameritrade, was up nearly 7%. Shares of Interactive Brokers were up over 1%.
