Robinhood suffers online outage with market advancing after rout

Clients blasted the company on social media for not being able to make trades.
The Robinhood application is displayed in the App Store on an Apple Inc. iPhone in an arranged photograph taken in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Dec. 14, 2018. The Securities Investor Protection Corp. said a new checking account from Robinhood Financial LLC raises red flags and that the deposited funds may not be eligible for protection. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

Robinhood Markets customers experienced technical issues on the company’s online service when U.S. markets opened on Monday morning.

“We’re experiencing downtime, and are working to resolve this as quickly as possible,” a Robinhood spokeswoman said in an email on Monday. She didn’t provide further details. As of 10:51 a.m., customers of the online brokerage were still having difficulty with the site.

Clients blasted the closely-held company on social media for not being able to make trades. “One of the most anticipated trading days and your service is down at market open,” one user wrote. Another user said: “What is going on — I can’t do any trades — you will lose me as customer going forward. This ridiculous.”

Downdetector, a website that tracks real-time outages online, reported the issue at the market open.

U.S. stocks headed for their first gain in eight sessions as investors assessed prospects that the Fed could intervene to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus. Last week, the S&P suffered the worst week for the benchmark since 2008.

During last week’s rout Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab customers experienced some technical issues.

Robinhood is based in Menlo Park, California.