Online trading platforms appear to go dark during huge market sell-off

A specialist works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK — Several online brokerage firms including Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard appeared to be down for thousands of users early Monday during one of the biggest stock markets sell-offs of 2024.

User reports appeared to peak around and just before 10 a.m. ET, data from outage tracker Downdectector shows. Some frustrated customers online said that they were unable to log in or access their account balances.

"Due to a technical issue, some clients may have difficulty logging in to Schwab platforms," Charles Schwab wrote on social media platform X Monday morning. "Please accept our apologies as our teams work to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

A Fidelity spokesperson told The Associated Press via email Monday that the company was aware of some customers experiencing "intermittent issues" earlier in the day, but said that this is now resolved.

Vanguard did not immediately return a request for comment.

At its peak, Charles Schwab saw nearly 15,000 outage reports from users around 9:50 a.m. ET, per Downdetector. Fidelity and Vanguard saw another 3,800 and 2,900, respectively, closer to 10 a.m. ET.

User reports appeared to fall notably for all three platforms an hour later, but timelines for full recovery weren't immediately known for Schwab and Vanguard.