Like other brokers, exchanges, data providers and other Wall Street institutions, last week's historic events tested our communications systems to the limit and beyond. (You may've seen news stories like this one from C/NET pointing to site slowness at many brokerage firms.) Friday's trading session in particular produced site and phone traffic spikes unlike any I've seen in 20 years in the business. Those unprecedented volumes created congestion and slowdowns throughout the markets, affecting players at every stage of order execution, including us. 

TradeKing maintains generous excess site capacity - in a nutshell, we monitor bandwidth usage for our biggest trading days and then build in excess capacity for spikes based on a multipler of that. As our company grows and our daily trading volume grows along with it, we regularly upgrade this ceiling to keep pace with our volumes.

For about 10 minutes on Friday morning and again for 5 minutes on Friday near the close of trading, we saw spikes in trading volume that exceeded what, by any traditional measure, should have been very generous bandwidth capacity. The result is that some clients experienced site slowness or delayed access. Similarly unprecedented phone volumes lead to a slower-than-usual response to phone calls, too.

I say "the result", but in fact technological slowdowns don't always boil down to simple, relatively controllable factors like capacity. As an online brokerage, we provide a gateway into the markets, a complex network of market makers, data providers, exchanges, clearing firms, and many other players, all working in concert - or not - to process your trade. If even one of those players gets hit with technical troubles or slowdowns, that ripples through the system to other players. Even extra redundancies and alternate trade routes - all of which we have in spades - don't always cut it.

Here's the bottom line: we scoured our systems, up and down the transaction chain, to identify and solve any problems we found that might be contributing to unacceptable slowdowns. We addressed every single issue we uncovered, however minor-seeming, and will continue to do so aggressively as this week unfolds. Having identified site and phone capacity as a potential problem area, we worked like crazy over the weekend to expand capacities and have encouraged every partner we work with to do the same. We're doing and will do every single thing we can to tame this beast and keep our systems at 100% under whatever crazy conditions the market throws at us. You deserve no less, and we won't be satisfied with less.

We could all probably stand a little calmer week, but if the wild swings do continue, we stand readier than ever to roll with them. That said, these market conditions are absolutely unprecedented, so we'll continue to monitor the situation closely and take no chances making predictions. Here are a few things you should keep in mind, too:

If you experience any site slowness, I urge you to call in your trade immediately at 877.495.5464. Our commissions are the same for phone trades as for online trades, so don't let that be a factor.

If you have account-specific issues you want to report to us, contact customer support. You'll get a faster, more accurate response than if you just post to one of the forums. Also, if you're registering a complaint, FINRA regulations require that a principal of our firm contact you specifically via phone or email - and that needs to happen through channels other than a public forum or blog post.

We try to be straight shooters here at TK, so we'll keep you posted about issues as they arise or get resolved - hopefully both. Please keep the channels open the other way, too. Your feedback is invaluable as we maintain the top-shelf customer service that Smart Money and others have repeatedly praised us for.

Thanks for your business, and thanks for keeping the feedback coming!

[image: Going nowhere fast by NathanFromDeVryEET on flickr]

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Follow the markets at the TradeKing Blog, learn options strategies from the Options Guy, or check out expert commentary on real client trades at TK All-Stars. 

Great honest post!

In contrast, one of my account holders - Fidelity's website was down for over an hour Friday morning and phones where "on hold " for over 1 hour 40 minutes. And they tried to blame exchanges. So, I did not make most possible profit on XLF/UWM position opened on Thursday noon .. oh well :)

As a result they lost quite substantial account which will go to "the other broker"

Hat off to TK

Thanks for being honest about this.  I've had other brokerage accounts where problems just get swept under the rug and it's more infuriating. 

As it stands, the lack of early morning access cost me money on Friday because I would've exited some short postions earlier, but under the circumstances I can't really say you guys did too bad a job.

Thank you for the post.

I was wondering what happened to the site on Friday, and thank you for explaining and trying to fix the situation. With unexpected earth-shattering events unfolding daily in the market, nobody can blame TK for a few minutes of slowness.

The big talk in the hallway among four engineers at my work on that Friday was that TD Ameritrade's trading was down for hours in the afternoon, and no one on TD Ameritrade could make trades.  I myself saw something really odd on Yahoo.  The reported dow index dropped to no change for a few minutes, but a few minutes later, there was no downward drop on the graph, and the yahoo headline of a 400 point plunge disappeared.  I thought I was halucinating.  My engineer buddies didn't believe me.

I appreciate honesty in my broker!  Lack of honesty and truth on Wall Street has caused the mess we are participating in!