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Schwab, Instinet outages
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October 22, 1999: 2:38 p.m. ET
Failures at online trading site, ECN leave traders out in the cold
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Charles Schwab Corp.'s online trading customers were unable to execute trades for nearly two hours Friday morning due to a glitch in the company's system software that wiped out both its Web site and automated phone system.
The outage began at 9:30 a.m. ET, when stock markets opened for trading. A Schwab (SCH) spokesman said the firm converted its access to a backup system with limited capability at 11:22 a.m..
The site failure marked the third consecutive day that Schwab, the No. 1 online and discount broker, has had problems with its online-trading functions.
When Schwab's site crashes, customers typically can call the firm's brokers to trade stocks for the same $29.95 per trade that the firm charges for online trades.
Friday's software problem, however, also disabled Schwab's automated phone system.
A system failure Wednesday paralyzed Schwab's Web site for more than two hours, just as the U.S. stock markets opened. On Thursday morning, some Schwab customers couldn't access their accounts through Internet providers America Online Inc. (AOL) and Microsoft Corp. 's (MSFT) Microsoft Network for 50 minutes, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The Schwab spokesman said Friday's system failure was unrelated to the two previous outages.
Schwab shares rose 1-7/16 to 31 in afternoon trade.
Instinet goes offline
Also Friday, Instinet, the electronic communications network that accounts for about 13.1 percent of Nasdaq volume, went off-line twice Friday because of problems with its system.
Instinet asked to be taken off the Nasdaq stock market at 9:58 a.m. and returned online at 10:35 a.m. Instinet then asked to be removed again at 10:53 a.m. and did not return to the Nasdaq until 11:38 a.m.
An Instinet spokesman said the company is still investigating the cause of the problem.
Instinet, a unit of Reuters (RTRSY), averages about 170 million trades a day over the Nasdaq stock market.
-- from staff and wire reports
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Charles Schwab
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