Ally Invest, other brokerages face disruptions amid 'unprecedented' trading volume

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A number of major brokerages reported technical difficulties this week, days after high volume paralyzed the trading platforms in the midst of a WallStreetBets-fueled frenzy.

Elevated interest in stock market bets, combined with turnover from unhappy customers switching platforms, triggered service problems at Ally Invest (ALLY) and brief outages at other brokerages like TD Ameritrade and Fidelity.

The issues raise questions about the technical capacity of the large brokerages to handle the surge in trading interest, as meme stocks like GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment (AMC) draw interest from brand new investors at unseen volumes.

Volume last Wednesday reached record levels, as investors traded more than 23.6 billion shares of U.S.-listed companies, according to Bloomberg data. Activity on Monday was comparably lower at 15.9 billion shares, but still elevated compared to normal trading levels over the past few months.

‘I am pulling all my money’

At Ally Invest, users reported issues logging into accounts over the weekend, and those able to successfully get through saw massive discrepancies in their account balances.

Fowana Terry lives in San Francisco and noticed on Saturday that her Ally Invest account was showing the wrong balance, reflecting old stock holdings from 2017. The issue was not corrected until Tuesday night.

Terry, who was not trying to invest in the high-volatility tickers, told Yahoo Finance that the error was preventing her from making investments in even other stocks. Her calls over the weekend were met with assurances from Ally that they were working on it.

“That’s a piece of s*** excuse especially when it’s dealing with people’s finances,” Terry said.

Ally Invest told Yahoo Finance Tuesday afternoon that the platform is still experiencing some problems for a “shrinking number of customers” amid “huge spikes” in account openings, concurrent users, and transactions.

“Extraordinary market volatility coupled with unprecedented volume challenged our platforms this past week, leading to login issues and other system anomalies,” said Ally Invest spokesperson Rebecca Anderson.

In the meantime, the brokerage is offering broker-assisted trades over the phone and is working on upgrading their systems.

That may have been too little, too late for Aaron Morris in Kansas, who exercised a call option on Friday to buy 100 shares Gamestop at $95 each. But the stock was not showing up in his Ally Invest account through the weekend and into Monday, when he had hoped to trade the shares.

After a four and a half hour wait on Tuesday, Morris was able to reach Ally over the phone and sold the shares in a market order at $85 each, taking a loss as GameStop tumbled 60% on Tuesday.