Major Trading Outages Reported at IBKR and Robinhood

In what seems like a regular occurrence as of late, individual equities trading providers Interactive Brokers and Robinhood have experienced major trading outages this morning during the European and US sessions, as reported by FinanceMagnates. There has been a renewed demand for single stock equities by traders primarily in the United States and Europe in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic and now a rush to vaccinate major populations has continued to impact global markets.

Interactive Brokers reported to clients that “they experienced “a significant failure” in multiple segments of a highly resilient data storage system”  which lead to customers being unable to “connect through their web, mobile, and desktop trading platforms.” As of this post, some individual traders are reporting that things are returning to normal, while others are signaling that their online trading capabilities are still down.

While Robinhood did not provide any reported feedback to customers and their public-facing information states, many clients have reported that they are also experiencing server connection problems.

Traders are advised to employ traditional means of communication during such adverse events, including calling their brokerages directly or using online chat with customer support in order to manage trading orders and positions. Often times, it is the responsibility of the trader to ensure that they have ample margin and account balance to support any open trades or orders irrespective of access to their online trading platform.