A trading frenzy in the U.S. overwhelmed several online trading platforms, resulting in technical issues earlier this week.
Traders reportedly missed out on the stock rally as electronic brokers such as Schwab, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade and Fidelity experienced problems.
All of the affected brokers resolved their issues within several hours. The companies attributed the temporary technical problems to the heavy traffic as traders scrambled to take advantage of the stock rally.
Stock futures in the U.S. rose Monday before the opening bell. Listings and futures mainly reacted to news of Pfizer's progress in the development of its vaccine. The drugmaker claimed that its coronavirus vaccine candidate was proven to be 90% effective in fighting the disease. The drugmaker's good news combined with the declaration of Joe Biden's win in the U.S. Presidential Elections are believed to have been the main contributors to the rally.
Sterling Trading Tech's chief technology officer, Todd Kenney, said that the primary issue may have been an authentication attempt overload. He explained that once people had seen or read the news about the vaccine and Biden's win, most likely ran to their devices to check their accounts or maybe initiate small trades. With hundreds of thousands of customers all logging in, systems may have buckled under the stress, Kenney added.
Fidelity said in a statement that customers were still able to access its site but most were experiencing "slower processing speeds" owing to the "extremely high volumes." TD Ameritrade issued a statement apologizing to affected customers who were not able to log in. It will be taking steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
Schwab and Vanguard told customers technical issues had been resolved. Vanguard instructed clients to follow several technical steps, which included clearing their cache and restarting their browsers, to ensure that they would have no other problems.
