Thousands of users early Monday faced what appeared to be an outage disrupting the operations of several online brokerage firms, including Vanguard, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab. This unexpected event occurred during what was anticipated to be one of the biggest stock market sell-offs of 2024.
According to ABC news, user reports peaked just before 10 a.m. ET, as tracked by DownDetector. Many customers expressed frustration over being unable to log in to their accounts and view their balances.
Charles Schwab apologized on X for the technical difficulties that prevented users from accessing the Schwab platform. The company assured that their teams were working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
"Due to a technical issue, some clients may have difficulty logging in to Schwab platforms. Please accept our apologies as our teams work to resolve the issue as quickly as possible," Schwab stated, according to WFAA.
A Fidelity spokesperson informed The Associated Press via email that they were aware of intermittent issues affecting customers but confirmed that the problem had been resolved.
Vanguard did not respond to requests for comment.
Downdetector reported the number of outage reports received during the technical issue. Schwab saw nearly 15,000 reports around 9:50 a.m. ET, Fidelity had approximately 3,800 reports, and Vanguard had 2,900 reports around 10 a.m. ET.
About an hour later, user reports regarding difficulties with the three platforms began to decline. However, the timeline for the complete recovery of Vanguard and Schwab remains unclear.
