Aug. 5 (UPI) — Major online brokerage companies’ platforms, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard, were down for several hours on Monday amid a major sell-off in trading, according to a website that tracks outages, Downdetector.com.
A total of 15,594 Charles Schwab users reported they couldn’t access their accounts at 9:52 a.m., 22 minutes after Wall Street’s opening bell. The number later dropped under 4,000 an hour later.
“Due to a technical issue, some clients may have difficulty logging in to Schwab platforms,” the brokerage posted on X. “Please accept our apologies as our teams work to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Hold times may be longer than usual.”
But after noon EDT, the broker posted: “A technical issue experienced by some clients has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
On outage reports, Fidelity had 3,700, Vanguard 2,888 and TD Ameritrade 1,840 at about 10 a.m., Downdetector showed.
No explanation of the outages was given by the brokerage companies.
The reported outages came amid a major selloff of U.S. stocks for a third day in a row because of continuing concerns about the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped more than 1,200 points in early trading and was down 872.85 to 38,864.4 after 1:30 p.m. with 2 1/2 hours to go in the trading day.
This is the lowest DJIA has been since late 2022.
Nasdaq is on track for its biggest decline since early 2020, down 465.78 to 16,316.38.