Interactive Brokers Breaks, the Second Outage this Month

Online brokerage firm Interactive Brokers experienced technical difficulties within its website yesterday, following Robinhood’s recent malfunction. The firm’s European systems went down for at least an hour, causing login problems and outages in the platform.

Traders tweeted their inability to log in to their accounts and access their money. Turns out, the website went down within Europe, although other participating regions have yet to confirm.

A few people on Twitter claimed the outage lasted for about an hour and 20 minutes. When asked, a spokesperson only confirmed a “brief” outage in Europe and said services are now back to normal.

The company has yet to confirm what issues caused the damage, although some clients domiciled in the UK and EU. Interactive Brokers’ Trader Workstation and IBKR mobile trading were briefly down due to a server issue.

However, clients still had access to other trading platforms from other brokers from the ibkr.com site at the time.

The outage counts as the second confirmed system outage so far this month. Earlier, Robinhood also experienced technical issues.

Behind the Robinhood Outage

A commission-free brokerage giant Robinhood spurred controversy following its system-wide outage. Several analysts are calling for different reasons why this happened.

Robinhood’s issues started before the market opened on Monday, which was one of the busiest trading days of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average enjoyed its single biggest point-gain since 2009.

There were a few theories of what caused the system outage. High trading volumes might have pressured the system, while some believe it was a Leap Day Bug.

The firm is currently reaching out to customers with information on how to contact the company. This allows them to work with users on a case-by-case basis, which may include billing credits and/or other compensation.

Robinhood denied that a 29^th error was at fault, but the company has yet to provide the real reason. Fortunately for both investors and the company, its app did not lose customer data, information, or funds.