LeapRate Exclusive… LeapRate has learned that clients of discount US online stockbroker TradeKing were unable to execute buy and sell orders via the company’s website for a while both yesterday (Monday) and this morning.
A company representative confirmed to LeapRate that TradeKing was experiencing some server issues, and that the company’s website was not communicating properly with its order routing system for a few minutes at around 11am EST Tuesday.
While clients were still able to enter orders manually over the phone, LeapRate learned that (not surprisingly) it was near impossible to get through by telephone to TradeKing’s trading floor during that period due to the flood of calls coming in while the website order system was down.
LeapRate readers will recall that TradeKing experienced similar downtime problems about a month ago in early January 2016. That was also on a day which saw large volumes and a big market drop from the open.
Readers of LeapRate will also recall that in late August a number of US online brokers saw execution problems and outages on a day in which the Dow opened with a 1,000 point drop, before recovering somewhat throughout the day to close down 588 points. The brokers affected then included TD Ameritrade, Vanguard, Scottrade and Fidelity.
TradeKing is apparently on the M&A block and looking to be sold. As we reported earlier, the company has retained investment bank Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) to find a buyer for the company for an estimated $300 million. TradeKing’s shareholders include venture capital firms Battery Ventures, Velocity Capital, and OCA Ventures.