Traders angry over ETrade’s outage THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 12, 2016...

Traders angry over ETrade’s outage

• THE AUSTRALIAN
• APRIL 12, 2016 12:00AM
• Andrew White

Customers are demanding compensation after an ETrade outage left them unable to trade stocks. Picture: Hollie Adams


ANZ is battling to fix “residual issues’’ at its online broking business ETrade Australia after an outage yesterday morning prevented 500 clients from trading their positions and they warned they would be seeking compensation.



Customers had discovered problems placing orders. According to an ANZ spokesman the problem was fixed before the local sharemarket opened but left “residual issues’’ for some clients who were unable to trade.

Users complained of repeated problems placing buy and sell orders. One said the broker would say a company sharemarket code did not exist and would not allow orders to be modified or cancelled.

Hotcopper, in a discussion thread on the online forum, highlighted how the outage prevented some clients from moving on lithium prospect Galaxy Resources as it surged to a three-year high of 34.5c yesterday.

Another user, Juno, wrote: “I was trying to top up this morning but ETrade has been down the entire morning and I still can’t even cancel open orders, let alone modify — they have said they will ring me tonight to discuss compensation.’’

Aronoff1 said the problems led to forgone profits of a few hundred dollars.

“In my case today I missed all the exits I could have taken on Open had ETrade been functioning,’’ Aronoff1 wrote.