Online traders cry foul as they get shut out of rally

Updated 1:25 p.m. PT with Scottrade comment; and 1 p.m. to correct that Dow rose 400 points, not percent.

The U.S. stock markets surged again on Friday, buoyed by Wall Street optimism over the government's move to help the markets.

The Dow rose more than 400 points at one point on Friday, while Standard & Poor's was up nearly 5 percent on news that the Federal Reserve plans to scrutinize banks' balance sheets and guarantee money market mutual funds, as well as reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has prohibited short sales of financial companies.

But not everyone was celebrating. Online traders who were shut out of accounts or experienced trade delays as a result of all the market action were not happy.

"Ameritrade has lost my confidence and cost me MONEY. The prices spiked on several securities in my account, but do you think I could log in and sell?????? By the time I got on, the prices had all retreated," a trader wrote in a message on a Yahoo Finance message board. "10 years ago, I could understand, but today? Please. I need a stable platform that I can RELY on, not something that may or not be available at the whim of the Ameritrade."

Ameritrade received the harshest criticism, with people reporting that they were locked out of accounts, with some saying they had problems at Scottrade and Zecco as well.

"ALL brokers had the same problem, with many worse than E*Trade. AMTD was kicking people out and couldn't get back in--at least that is what I heard. How would you like that?" a Yahoo Finance message board member wrote. "My understanding is that the clearinghouse for the brokers was overloaded, and that backed up into the online brokers."

One trader said he couldn't log onto the Scottrade site for a while, and when he did log in, the site was slow and then rejected an order he placed with an "administrative error."

"I am furious as well," the trader writes on the Yahoo forum. "Just as upsetting as the failed platform, their help desk personnel denied they were having a problem. Hard to believe, since I was on hold for 10 minutes, waiting to talk to someone, and you get confirmation here others were having problems. What a crock of BULL @#$%. Yea, I was hoping to make some money today, but none of my trade actions are moving. It was a nice thought. At least I made SOME money this week. Something tells me this volatile action will continue on Monday, due to all the backup retail orders."

Another trader wrote that he had been frozen out of his Ameritrade accounts four times this week and that the toll-free number was busy.

One poster seemed to sum up the anger well with this comment: "Have been locked out for 20 minutes AGAIN today. I received a call from a supervisor. Her comment was 'we received your call yesterday and are researching the issue.' Fix your damn site. Class action anyone?"

A Scottrade spokeswoman provided this statement via e-mail: "This week has brought some of the highest trading volume ever for Scottrade. Our trading sites have remained up and running throughout the week. While some customers did experience some slowness, they were able to place trades online or through our branch offices. We sympathize with those who have experienced issues and have been working hard to alleviate them."

Representatives from TD Ameritrade did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

[ggmex4wd5sp]

"The Dow rose more than 400 percent at one point on Friday, " really?

[BirdDog01]

I had no trouble trading on TDAmeritrade this afternoon.

[basraw]

this afternoon wasn't the problem on TD.

[winstein]

ETrade was a little slow in the morning, but works fine.

[dargon19888]

You get what you pay for...

You want cheap trades, then you have to expect when there is a surge in market activity, you're going to experience lag times.

I was locked out of Scottrade for a least 10 minutes. I keept getting we application errors when trying to log into my account.

[raylopez]

E*Trade was down today (could not log in) early in the morning but then cleared up.

[tapaskm]

I had problems all mornig with logging in to Ameritrade. First 30 minutes after opening bell, I could not get in and then when i finally was able to get past the login screen, my home page was taking more than 10 minutes and still not showing up (and I have a very very fast internet connection). After a couple of hours, I was able to login and get to my home screen, but on trying to refresh quotes or my position, I was thrown out with a message "To protect your security your session has expired". This is a complely incorrect statement. How can your session expire in seconds when you try to refresh the page. I also got this message many times even though it had been seconds since I had logged in.

I have lost the opportunity for about 2000$ between the selling high and buying low price of the stocks I intended to trade.

Class action - yes - this is a most certain win for Ameritrade customers.

Tapas, NJ

[HighwayHome]

Oh, the horror!

[Trading_JJ]

Unfortunately the online service agreement of many discount brokers indicates that their system will run flawlessly the majority of the time. Technical difficulties are expected and the company is not liable for not being able to log in or system timeouts. As mentioned before, you DO get what you pay for. Try Schwab.com, I have never experienced difficulties trading through them and made alot of money today. The slightly higher commissions is more than made up for with peace of mind and they have excellent customer service and research information.

[jsusanne]

I have found Schwab's customer service to be excellent, and had no problems trading on their Street Smart Pro platform on 9/19- (this is different from Streetsmart.com). They also offered 50 free trades when I initiated my account.
these types of market situations are likely to become more frequent- any strategy that can be put into place to protect you is critical- Schwab allows conditional orders(not available at Scottrade) which is similar to stop limit, but the options of conditions are greatly expanded- You can therefore enter an order ahead of time- but not have it actually be put in the market until the condition is met- this is important for thinly traded markets and keeps you from having to have "mental stops" that you may not be able to initiate for one reason or another.

[ikramerica--2008]

Schwab had the same problem this morning. I could not get on to Streetsmart.com, the active trading service from schwab that is supposed to be for the "important" traders. I also could not get onto the regular site and see my positions. Luckily I had installed streetsmart pro on VMWare Fusion and was able to connect that way. I was able to sell at the peak of the stock I was trying to get out of. It was up 13%. By the end of the day, it was down 7%. I could have lost $1000s of dollars had I not installed that program as a failsafe last week!

[FL-Gypsy]

I experienced no problems at all with E Trade. I was logged on with them the whole trading session. It worked fine with me here in Florida so it may also be that there were problems with an ISP for some of those traders having problems or slowdowns. The E Trade platform was great.