Fidelity customers freaked out Wednesday when a tech glitch caused their balances drop to $0

[timosman]

https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/A935DA90-5353-11EA-965F-DB012FB43FB7

Feb 20, 2020

‘Could you imagine if you went to bed last night with $1 million in your Fidelity accounts and woke up this morning to $0?’

[SUP]Fidelity Investments customers were experiencing “intermittent technical issues” on Wednesday.[/SUP]


Some Fidelity Investments customers were in for a nightmare scenario on Wednesday: when they logged into their online portals, they saw they had no balance — or, in some cases, no account at all.

The Boston-based financial services company is fielding complaints on Twitter from users who say they can’t see their retirement accounts, or their other investment or checking accounts. The problem appears to have started in the morning, though the company was still responding to Twitter users as of 3 p.m. EST.

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[dannno]

 

[devil21]

Happened again today to Fidelity customers. Goes to show that it doesn't matter how well you play the markets, they can just shut the website off and you're stuck watching your portfolio disappear on CNBC while the insiders get all of their sell orders entered lickety-split.

Today I tried to place a few tiny puts and every time I entered an order, the bid/ask spread magically changed to be just out of the reach of my order. Oops, sorry please try again but this time raise your bid a little more, won't you? Which of course then pushed the spread up even further. I'm almost convinced it was my own brokerage trying to get me to overpay for the puts so it could take the other side. I quit trying since I'm not stupid.

 

[Okie RP fan]

^^ Yea, I actually saw some wide coverage about this being the 2nd or 3rd time in a week of it happening.

Come on, Fidelity…

 

[Krugminator2]

Happened again today to Fidelity customers. Goes to show that it doesn't matter how well you play the markets, they can just shut the website off and you're stuck watching your portfolio disappear on CNBC while the insiders get all of their sell orders entered lickety-split.

Today I tried to place a few tiny puts and every time I entered an order, the bid/ask spread magically changed to be just out of the reach of my order. Oops, sorry please try again but this time raise your bid a little more, won't you? Which of course then pushed the spread up even further. I'm almost convinced it was my own brokerage trying to get me to overpay for the puts so it could take the other side. I quit trying since I'm not stupid.

Give me a break. There is no conspiracy. Fidelity is just a really bad broker. I had a Roth IRA with Fidelity just so I could use Wealth Lab. I make like 10 trades a month in the account and most are more intermediate term stuff. But I had so many problems and the platform is so clumsy I switched two weeks ago.

As far as options, on a day like today when you have a market that is rapidly changing and making a huge move, the spreads in the options widen and are harder to fill. Market makers have to constantly hedge to stay delta neutral so they can't rapidly fill orders with tight spreads or they expose themselves to too much directional risk. I had three different orders to buy puts on the VXX today and it took more than a few minutes to fill each time.

 

[devil21]

Give me a break. There is no conspiracy. Fidelity is just a really bad broker. I had a Roth IRA with Fidelity just so I could use Wealth Lab. I make like 10 trades a month in the account and most are more intermediate term stuff. But I had so many problems and the platform is so clumsy I switched two weeks ago.

As far as options, on a day like today when you have a market that is rapidly changing and making a huge move, the spreads in the options widen and are harder to fill. Market makers have to constantly hedge to stay delta neutral so they can't rapidly fill orders with tight spreads or they expose themselves to too much directional risk. I had three different orders to buy puts on the VXX today and it took more than a few minutes to fill each time.

It wasn't Fidelity, actually, but having said that it's common knowledge that brokerages can and do take the other sides of customer's trades. It would be naive to think they can't/won't game their platforms accordingly.

 

[devil21]

Now it's RobinHood. Hmm...Robbin' da Hood?

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/millennials-marooned-robinhood-experiences-system-wire-outage

Last week it was Fidelity shutting down, not allowing investors to trade during the historic market crash, now Robinhood trading app, popularized by millennials, has experienced trading issues on Monday morning. more

My own broker last week (mid-sized) wouldn't display options chains during big drops, also. Kept saying that my option date field selections were invalid.