UPDATED 21:21 EDT / MARCH 02 2020

APPS

Epic fail: Robinhood app offline today as Dow Jones logs biggest point gain ever

Popular online stock trading app Robinhood Market Inc. was down today on a day when markets rallied following their coronavirus-inspired plunge last week.

Why the app was offline is unknown, but it affected all Robinhood users, including iOS, Android and web apps starting Monday morning and extending through the entire trading day. Of all the days for Robinhood to go down, today was the very worst: The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its biggest daily point increase in its entire history.

“We are experiencing a system-wide outage. We are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible,” the company initially said in a message to clients Monday. That system-wide outage extended the whole trading day, with Robinhood posting on Twitter at 4:07 p.m. EST that “we are still experiencing system-wide issues. Our team is continuing to work to resolve this and we’ll provide updates as they become available.” New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq trading hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Robinhood users were not only unimpressed but furious and many claimed to have lost thousands of dollars due to the outage.

Robinhood was not alone in having difficulties during a record breaking day of trading. Pymnts reported that both Fidelity and Charles Schwab also had difficulties during the day, going on to note that higher-than-average trading volumes could be potentially to blame.

Whatever the reason, the outage is not a good look for a startup rumored to be readying an initial public offering in the near future. Robinhood has been well-supported with venture capital, having raised $323 million in funding on a $7.6 billion valuation in July, possibly its last round pre-IPO and taking its amount of funding raised to $862 million.

Robinhood hasn’t been without drama, however. In November, users found a glitch in its app that gave them the ability to trade stocks with excess borrowed funds. One person claimed that the so-called “infinite money cheat code” showed he had a $1 million position funded by a $4,000 deposit, while another claimed to have accessed $50,000 on Robinhood for free.

Photo: Robinhood

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