In the wake of massive volatility on the U.S. stock market, we’re looking at reports that fancy new app Robinhood did not allow users to trade during the entire upward market swing that happened on Monday.
Monday morning, the system went down. Observers estimate it was a 17-hour outage that left Robinhood users without access to the entire market spike of about 5%.
Those who were accustomed to trading on the Robin Hood platform at all are furious – some are calling for a class action suit. Robinhood managers are apologetic and shamefaced.
“We are still experiencing system-wide issues. Our team is continuing to work to resolve this and we’ll provide updates as they become available,” reads a tweet from Robinhood Help today. “We apologize again for the trouble this has caused and appreciate your patience with us as we work to resume service.”
Hailed as an innovative new way to do business, Robinhood had been getting a lot of attention from the tech sector. However, a massive failure like this is sure to be a black eye for the platform, at least in terms of its ability to facilitate market trades.
This story also shows the perils of unplanned downtime. Planned downtime can always be accommodated and worked into a schedule, but this amount of unplanned downtime can be a grievous wound to any digital finance business.
Robinhood insiders report that the problem was due to an issue with “part of the company’s infrastructure,” which is about as clear as mud. However, users suggest that, hilariously, Robinhood engineers simply forgot to code for the leap year.
“Unbelievable,” tweeted one disgruntled user identified as CATMAN. “People lost soooooo much money today because of faulty code. This should be a #finra negligence.”
We’ll see more coming out of this boondoggle in the days to come. What is this going to do to Robinhood? What do you think?
UPDATE: DJIA holding steady around 26,6. Trade at your own risk.
