Increased trading in the lead-up to last week’s share splits of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) caused trading disruptions at major brokerages such as at Robinhood, Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW), Vanguard Group, TD Ameritrade and Fidelity Investments.
Robinhood experienced a technical problem that caused delays to customer order status updates. Heavy traffic from Apple and Tesla’s corporate actions exacerbated the challenges. Meanwhile, Schwab made a change to the storage systems it uses to display price quotes that clashed with heightened volumes around the splits and touched off an error.
Retail traders have made a roaring return to the stock market in 2020, as people with more spare time because of the COVID-19 pandemic are trading shares and options as they seek to profit from dislocations across the global economy.
The online brokerages have enjoyed record sign-ups and trading activity as a result.
Among the market’s darlings are Apple, which split its shares 4-for-1, while Tesla’s split was 5-for-1. Though total trading volume increased in both stocks on the day of their splits, neither hit record volumes in a year of extreme volatility.
