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Online Stock Broker Scottrade.com goes down early this morning, causing losses in millions to its users

posted December 17, 2007 - 12:11pm
Online Stock Broker Scottrade.com goes down early this morning, causing losses in millions to its users

Early this morning, online stock broker Scottrade (www.Scottrade.com) was down for a while. Its website was unresponsive and had .net errors all over the pages.

This kind of downtime could cause millions in losses to its customers. Imagine traders that have already put in their limit orders not being able to change them when they want to. If the market is tiding in their favor, they would want to make more of it. But i guess scottrade will not compensate any of its customers for this downtime. I am sure they will waive the aggrement that the customer must have signed will signing up. Well, they will lose a ton of customers for sure after this fiasco.

Author: steve54
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Comments

Technology Blips

angelskates - Mon, 2007-17-12 3:49 pm
The Stock Market is a gamble, but at least the house does not hold all the odds... lol We get spoiled so quickly by technology. I don't believe I ever heard speculation about brokerage houses compensating clients for potential trades lost if Ma Bell was out of service... back in the day... you know,B.I. (before internet)... Technology is a wonderful thing when it works, but it does not hurt to have a back up plan... just in case.. Like they used to say... "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"... you know back before they had all the cars and trains and truckss and planes to carry the eggs around. back when you had to put them in a basket and carry them into town to market... Angel

A lot of the large discount

DdraigX - Mon, 2007-17-12 2:39 pm
A lot of the large discount brokers are important to the market and I think both of you are right to an extent. "Day Traders" for example usually end up making the brokers money and whoever they're buying shares from. I don't consider myself a day trader but more an investor. If I hear a stock I own is about to have a bad income statement I would want to be able to get in and sell it. If you're using large discount brokers then this can become extremely frustrating. Also a lot of traders are buying/selling stock options which can be held on to for months or years or up to hours or minutes. It depends on how much movement the underlying stock has. I'd explain it a bit more but it would be a book :)

They shouldn't spend money they are not willing to lose...

jdubhub - Mon, 2007-17-12 2:11 pm
I don't gamble invest in the stock market, so I have no use for those kinds of websites, but I don't understand day trading. The people who made millions playing the market (assuming day traders are in it to make money) didn't make money from selling a stock as soon as they bought it. The only ones who stand to benefit from day trading are the brokers, which is why Scottrade can afford $7 trades--they make up for it in volume. Otherwise, day trading is an addiction like any other form of gambling, which would explain the frustration (read: withdrawal symptoms) of the people on the message boards.

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scottrade outage

steve54 - Mon, 2007-17-12 1:59 pm
agree with you jdubhub. I think every online venture has their disclaimer and do not want to be liable for web outages. But the impact in the stock trading industry is huge when a big stock broker like scottrade goes down. I have read through multiple yahoo finance message boards, where people are just frustrated because of the trades they missed during the downtime. Well, stuff does break and everything is not perfect. I think scottrade should stop all limit orders when there is an outage or atleast intimate their customers when they are experiencing difficulties, so that customers atleast have an ETA and figure out their next step.

"Could" cause of "Did" Cause?

jdubhub - Mon, 2007-17-12 1:40 pm
Yes, the potential is there for people to lose money without the day traders having access to their accounts, but you said they absolutely did lose money, too. But, are they or aren't they going to be compensated? Perhaps, it would be more compelling an argument if you read Scottrade's Homepage and saw at the bottom where it says: Quote:Market volatility, volume, and system availability may impact account access and trade execution. Even before people open an account, Scottrade tells them that "Sh-tuff Happens" and they may not always be able to access it.

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Same thing happened to TD Ameritrade

DdraigX - Mon, 2007-17-12 1:03 pm
Similar thing happened to TD Ameritrade about a week or two ago. I think it was mostly with their graphs and informational streams as opposed to the entire website. It was rather frustrating fortunately I did not have any trades in play.

Same thing happened to TD Ameritrade

DdraigX - Mon, 2007-17-12 1:03 pm
Similar thing happened to TD Ameritrade about a week or two ago. I think it was mostly with their graphs and informational streams as opposed to the entire website. It was rather frustrating fortunately I did not have any trades in play.

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