Robinhood definitely had down time yesterday, but I'd like to make a note that /r/Robinhood overreacts to things like crazy. I'm pretty sure 95% of the people in there are under 20 and daytrading options with less than $5000.

I'm bringing this up because, while some people did lose money yesterday because of Robinhood's downtime, there we also a lot of people claiming to have lost money, but were blatantly lying.

I'm not trying to let RH off the hook, but /r/robinhood makes it sound like RH was robbing them at gun point.

>down time

Look at the comments I linked to. That's not downtime. People's transaction history is being rolled back. Some people still have fake positions showing. Another had all his positions sold. Another got bonus buying power.

The inconsistencies in the comments are striking. Looks like a complete lotto of what happened to people's accounts. That inspires zero in their back end processes.

>makes it sound like RH was robbing them at gun point.

It pretty much is. With options timing is everything and being locked out is a disaster. Especially with the current volatility

Presumably it'll all get straightened out eventually but wow I'm definitely not putting in hard earned money on RH

>makes it sound like RH was robbing them at gun point.

>It pretty much is.

It really really isn't. This is the type of exaggeration why I find that sub insufferable.

Robinhood's stability issues are well known and normal for a fast growing, early stage startup. You as a user need to understand the limitations of the platform and incorporate them into your trading strategy.

Swing trading options on RH is like carving a turkey with a chainsaw. Sure, you can do it, but it's not the right tool for the job.

>stability issues are well known

This isn't someone startup app going wonky that needs a server reboot. It's peoples money & expectations for reliability are much higher. Justifiably so.

>limitations of the platform

This isn't a 'limitation'!?!?! Their system crapped out and caused chaos

>Swing trading options on RH is like carving a turkey with a chainsaw

Agreed. This isn't about which broker is best for what strategy. This is about a broker failing to fulfil its core purpose - reliably executing orders

> This isn't someone startup app

It totally is. The company is exactly 5 years old and has only had customers on their platform for 3.5 years. The company only has like 300 employees. It's a start up through and through.

For reference, Coinbase and Acorns are older than Robinhood.

> This isn't a 'limitation'!?!?!

It's totally a limitation in terms of availability of the platform. They are not promising 100% uptime and no reasonable person should be expecting that from an app barely out of the beta stage.

If your trading strategy can't handle a few hours of downtime, you should find a platform that has an SLA guaranteeing uptime.

> This is about a broker failing to fulfil its core purpose - reliably executing orders

It's also about understanding that shit happens, especially with startups.

I'm not trying to let RH off the hook here, but people using their platform need to understand that they are a new company growing quickly and things will break. If your lively hood depends on things not being broken then you are going to have a bad time.

Robinhood has gone down before and will go down again, don't use it if you can't handle that truth. To use an old adage "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me"

I got lucky and they just canceled a sale I had pending. It wasn't in danger of selling anyway, so no harm to me. If I were playing options every day I'd probably switch to TW or IB, because if you're playing that game you kinda need more stability than RH can provide.

That was my impression as well. A bunch of people using a cheapo trading account and now paying the price for being so cheap.

It reminds of when businesses grossing over a million dollars spend $5/month on their hosting and are offended when their site is down.

That's /r/wallstreetbets :)

They both do. The only difference is that WSB accepts losing money while /r/robinhood loses money and then claims it's Robinhood stole their money.

Yeah, WSB is far more grown up about being childish. They know they're playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes, they are willingly doing it for the thrills. A lot of the folks on r/robinhood are genuinely naive and need to keep their hands away from the options toggle.

Wouldn't you need 25k in your account to day trade options without being caught up as a RH pattern day trader?

Almost always. IIRC there are some trivially small exceptions – you can make I believe 3 trades a day before being classified as PDT – and I believe entry and exit of a single position count as two separate trades.

But there are a lot of everyday people rigorously swing trading with smallish accounts. I've had some really interesting chats with uber drivers who do this, since they're sitting around in front of a phone all day anyway.

Actually, it's three trades in a 5 day period AFAIK. Less than one a day or you will be marked as PDT. Also worth knowing is if you are selling multiple shares or contracts then it might get filled in separate orders, which will count as separate trades. People get burned all the time thinking they're safe from PDT.

You are correct, I was exaggerating a bit.

I feel like most of that sub isn't technically day trading, but it feels like the average time holding a security is less than a week.

Mostly not actual day trading because relatively few have over 25K in their account. But there are a lot of people buying & selling weeklies.

Too stressful for me.

Larger brokerages have the same problem. I've lost money using Fidelity twice because their site was down for an hour.

Haven't had any thus far with IB. Admittedly only 2 years of history though

This needs to be much higher up. They may be facing lawsuits if they don't fix this. Looks like people lost significant money.

wallstreetbets is basically roulette. It's not good that people lost money through the glitch but most of these people have incredibly high risk positions. Posts like this are common: https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/9rrug5/plea...

>wallstreetbets is basically roulette.

Perhaps. Entirely irrelevant though for the topic at hand.

The broker needs to execute instructions reliable. Doesn't matter how retarded the thinking behind the instructions is