Forex broker IG Group recently suffered a short outage which prevented some of its users from trading during market hours. The platform has restored service after the outage but trading in GameStop is halted.
Access issues on the platform
IG Group customers started facing problems on the platform after the US markets opened. Some users complained about problems related to logins on the platform. Several others reached out to the helplines of the firm as the day progressed. The problems have occurred at a time when several other brokers in the US have also experienced outages. This week, prominent traders like TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Robinhood faced simultaneous outages.
Most firms are facing unusually high amounts of traffic. IG’s problems could be related to the recent surge in GameStop Corp shares. The share price of the company has doubled as of late because of increasing retail investor interest. The video game retailer’s stock has already gone past an 800% surge because of which the brokerage suspended trading in the stock. Note that the price has gone from $20 to $148 in the past two weeks alone.
IG Group restores services
Some traders noted that their issues with the broker have been resolved. IG Group also acknowledged the problem and posted on its website that it is experiencing some technical issues because of which users are unable to log into their trading platforms and apps. The firm later posted on Twitter that all issues have been resolved and clients can gain access back to their accounts. It also advised clients still facing issues to refresh the page and try logging in again.
The platform didn’t specify the problem it went through but traders have been complaining about outages and technical problems with brokers since the beginning of 2020. Due to stay-at-home orders and a larger number of users on their platforms, brokers have been unable to keep pace during historical market moves. This has led to problems on their platforms which continue in 2021 as well.
