KEYTAKEAWAYS
- Robinhood suspends 24-hour trading for 8 hours due to issues with Blue Ocean ATS.
- Users report canceled trades and lost profits, questioning the legality of the suspension.
CONTENT
Blue Ocean ATS, Robinhood’s execution venue for round-the-clock trading, halts overnight operations amid global market volatility. Users report canceled trades and lost profits, raising regulatory concerns.
Robinhood, the popular cryptocurrency-friendly stock trading app, experienced a significant disruption to its 24-hour market service on August 6, 2024. The platform’s execution venue, Blue Ocean ATS (BOATs), suspended overnight trading from 12:00 AM to 8:00 AM UTC, impacting numerous investors.
Robinhood 24 Hour Market’s execution venue, Blue Ocean ATS (BOATs), has suspended overnight trading for tonight. 24 Hour Market orders that are open as of approx. 8 PM ET will be routed for execution starting at approx. 4 AM ET tomorrow. You may cancel your order at any time, and…
— Robinhood Help (@AskRobinhood) August 5, 2024
The suspension was announced via Robinhood’s support account on X (formerly Twitter). The company advised users that they could cancel existing orders and place new ones for future trading sessions. However, all open trades at the time of suspension would be routed for execution after the eight-hour halt.
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This incident follows reports of a similar suspension the previous day, coinciding with a global stock market downturn. Japan’s Nikkei index experienced its most significant decline since the 1987 Black Monday crash, highlighting the volatile market conditions.
Robinhood’s 24-hour market service, launched in May 2023, allows customers to invest outside traditional trading hours. The platform utilizes BOATs for executing overnight trading orders. According to Robinhood’s support page, BOATs implements risk controls to prevent extreme price movements, similar to public exchanges’ limit up and limit down halts during market hours.
The trading suspension triggered a wave of complaints from Robinhood users. Many investors reported canceled trades and lost profits, particularly in high-performing stocks like Nvidia. Some users shared screenshots of emails from Robinhood stating that trades executed during the suspension period would be canceled due to issues experienced by Blue Ocean ATS.
The incident has raised questions about the legality and transparency of such suspensions. Several users called for regulatory bodies like FINRA to investigate the matter, expressing concerns about the potential loss of profits and the lack of records for purchases made during the suspension period.
Robinhood’s 24-hour trading halt occurred amidst reports of trading outages on other major brokerage platforms, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, and TD Ameritrade. This widespread disruption underscores the challenges faced by trading platforms during periods of extreme market volatility.
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