Global fears sparked a mass sell-off in stocks and cryptocurrencies on Monday, as investors were frustrated by outages at major brokerages including Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments.
Reuters Reports Online services at Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments experienced major problems on Monday, preventing many users from logging into their accounts during a chaotic trading session. The outages coincided with a day of heightened market volatility as investors sold riskier assets amid growing concerns about a possible U.S. economic recession.
Wall Street’s major stock indexes tumbled on Monday, driven by weak economic data, disappointing second-quarter earnings from major technology companies and rising geopolitical tensions that have combined to rekindle recession fears and dampen hopes for a soft economic landing.
According to the outage tracking website Down DetectorSchwab reported more than 3,400 users were down, while Fidelity had more than 3,500 users down. Vanguard also saw nearly 2,500 reports of outages on its website, but the company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Downdetector reports of outages typically represent much larger scale outages because only a small number of people actually report them to the sites.
Schwab and Fidelity acknowledged that some users were having trouble accessing their accounts but did not provide details about what caused the outages. Such technical issues can be triggered during periods of extreme market volatility, raising questions about the brokerages’ ability to handle large volumes of trading.
Fidelity later said it had resolved the issue and provided some relief to affected investors. Earlier in the day, Robinhood Markets, a popular platform for retail investors, also said it had suspended its overnight trading service, which allows users to trade certain stocks and exchange-traded funds around the clock. The company later said it had resumed the service.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
