Advisors Made Trades as Retail Investors Struggled to Log On
As multiple trading websites faltered Monday, keeping thousands of investors logged out as stocks dropped, financial advisors appeared to have better luck reaching and using brokerage platforms on behalf of their clients.
Retail investors reported trouble logging in to Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, Vanguard and other platforms as the trading week opened, although the reports subsided by early afternoon, according to Downdetector, an outage monitoring site.
At one point, more than 15,250 Schwab clients reported issues using the financial giant’s mobile and online brokerage services.
Advisors responding to queries from ThinkAdvisor asking about their experiences using trading platforms Monday reported generally smooth sailing.
“Zero issues for me at Schwab,” Branden DuCharme, of Du Charme Wealth Management, posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Carman Kubanda, financial planner at Innovative Wealth Building, reported by email: “No problems accessing Schwab client accounts and nothing affecting normal business activities.” He said he was using Schwab’s advisor-facing platform.
A Schwab spokesperson told ThinkAdvisor by email Tuesday: “Some advisors may have experienced intermittent issues for a few minutes on Schwab Advisor Center yesterday but those were quickly resolved and our platforms are fully available.”
Justin Norman, vice president of financial planning at Pillar Financial Group, told ThinkAdvisor by email that he had no problems working on his professional custodial platforms.
